uieting recurrence of the vertigo which had seized him
while he was searching for his negro treasure-bearer on the levee.

"I've had an overdose of excitement, I guess," he said to himself,
flinging the cigar away. "The best thing for me to do is to go down to
the train and get to bed."

He went about it listlessly, with a curious buzzing in his ears and a
certain dimness of sight which was quite disconcerting; and when a cab
was summoned he was glad enough to let a respectfully sympathetic porter
lend him a shoulder to the sidewalk.

The drive in the open air was sufficiently tonic to help him through the
details of ticket-buying and embarkation; and afterward sleep came so
quickly that he did not know when the Pullman porter drew the curtains
to adjust the screen in the window at his feet, though he did awake
drowsily later on at the sound of voices in the aisle, awoke to realize
vaguely that his two table companions of the Hotel Chouteau cafe were to
be his fellow travellers in the Pullman.

The train was made up ready to leave, and the locomotive was filling the
great train-shed with stertorous hissings, when a red-faced man slipped
through the gates to saunter over to the Pullman and to peck
inquisitively at the porter.

"Much of a load to-night, George?"

"No, sah; mighty light: four young ladies goin' up to de school in
Faribault, Mistah Grierson and his daughter, and a gentleman from de
Chouteau."

"A gentleman from the Chouteau? When did he come down?"

The porter knew the calling of the red-faced man only by intuition; but
Griswold's tip was warming in his pocket and he lied at random and on
general principles.

"Been heah all de evenin'; come down right early afte' suppeh, and went
to baid like he was sick or tarr'd or somethin'."

"What sort of a looking man is he?"

"Little, smooth-faced, narr'-chisted gentleman; look like he might
be----"

But the train was moving out and the red-faced man had turned away.
Whereupon the porter broke his simile in the midst, picked up his
carpet-covered step, and climbed aboard.

XV

THE GOTHS AND VANDALS

In the day of its beginnings, Wahaska was a minor trading-post on the
north-western frontier, and an outfitting station for the hunters and
trappers of the upper Mississippi and Minnesota lake region.

Later, it became the market town of a wheat-growing district, and a
foundation of modest prosperity was laid by well-to-do farmers
gravitating