bones through the
flabby flesh.

"Look here, Ben, have you kept control of the West Virginia and
Wyanoke?" he enquired, and I saw the pupils of his eyes contract to fine
points of steel, as they did when he meant business.

"Nobody wanted it, General. I still own control--or rather I still
practically own the road."

"Well, take my advice and don't sell to the first man that asks you,
even if he comes from the South Midland. I've just heard that they've
been tapping those undeveloped coal fields at Wyanoke, and I shouldn't
be surprised if they turned out, after all, to be the richest in West
Virginia."

It was then that I saw clear sky.

"I'll hold on, General, as long as you say," I replied. "Meanwhile, I'll
run out there and have a look."

"Oh, have a look by all means. I say, Ben," he added after a minute,
with a worried expression in his face, "have you heard about the trouble
that old fool Theophilus has been getting into? Mark my words, before he
dies, he'll land his sister in the poorhouse, as sure as I sit here.
Garden needed moisture, he said, couldn't raise some of those scraggy,
new-fangled things that nobody can pronounce the names of except
himself, so he went to work and had pipes laid from one end to the
other. When the bill came in there was no way to pay it except by
mortgaging his house, so he's gone and mortgaged it. Mrs. Clay, poor
lady, came to me on the point of tears--she'll be in the poorhouse yet,
I was obliged to tell her so--and entreated me to make an effort to
restrain Theophilus. 'I try to keep the catalogues from reaching him,'
she said, 'but sometimes the postman slips in without my seeing him, and
then he's sure to deliver one. Whenever Theophilus reads about any
strange specimen, or any hybridising nonsense that nobody heard of when
I was young, he seems to go completely out of his head, and the worst of
'em is,' she added," concluded the General, chuckling under his breath,
"'there isn't a single pretty, sweet-smelling flower in the lot.'"

"I'm awfully sorry about the house, General. Isn't there some way of
curbing him?"

"I never saw the bit yet that could curb an old fool," replied the great
man, indignantly; "the next thing his roof will be sold over his head,
and they'll go to the poorhouse, that's what I told Mrs. Clay. Poor
lady, she was really in a terrible state of mind."

"Surely you won't let it come to that. Wait till these dreamed-of coal
fields materialise an