fact that he was
baffled, the Honourable Hilary departed. That student of human nature,
Mr. Hamilton Tooting, a young man of a sporting appearance and a
free vocabulary, made the next attempt. It is a characteristic of Mr.
Tooting's kind that, in their efforts to be genial, they often use an
awkward diminutive of their friends' names.

"Hello, Aust," said Mr. Tooting, "I dropped in to get those witnesses in
that Meagre accident, before I forget it."

"I think I'll keep 'em," said Austen, making a note out of the Revised
Statutes.

"Oh, all right, all right," said Mr. Tooting, biting off a piece of his
cigar. "Going to handle the case yourself, are you?"

"I may."

"I'm just as glad to have some of 'em off my hands, and this looks to me
like a nasty one. I don't like those Mercer people. The last farmer they
ran over there raised hell."

"I shouldn't blame this one if he did, if he ever gets well enough,"
said Austen. Young Mr. Tooting paused with a lighted match halfway to
his cigar and looked at Austen shrewdly, and then sat down on the desk
very close to him.

"Say, Aust, it sometimes sickens a man to have to buy these fellows off.
What? Poor devils, they don't get anything like what they ought to get,
do they? Wait till you see how the Railroad Commission'll whitewash that
case. It makes a man want to be independent. What?"

"This sounds like virtue, Ham."

"I've often thought, too," said Mr. Tooting, "that a man could make more
money if he didn't wear the collar."

"But not sleep as well, perhaps," said Austen.

"Say, Aust, you're not on the level with me."

"I hope to reach that exalted plane some day, Ham."

"What's got into you?" demanded the usually clear-headed Mr. Tooting,
now a little bewildered.

"Nothing, yet," said Austen, "but I'm thinking seriously of having a
sandwich and a piece of apple pie. Will you come along?"

They crossed the square together, Mr. Tooting racking a normally fertile
brain for some excuse to reopen the subject. Despairing of that, he
decided that any subject would do.

"That Humphrey Crewe up at Leith is smart--smart as paint," he remarked.
"Do you know him?"

"I've seen him," said Austen. "He's a young man, isn't he?"

"And natty. He knows a thing or two for a millionaire that don't have to
work, and he runs that place of his right up to the handle. You ought
to hear him talk about the tariff, and national politics. I was passing
there the other day, and he