he
said. "I know the undertaker, and I can manage it as well as you. You
look used up."

"I am pretty nearly," muttered Gordon. Then he gave an almost
affectionate glance at James. "Do you think you can manage it?" he said.

James smiled. "It is a new thing to me, but I have no doubt I can," he
replied.

"You cannot imagine what a weight you would take off my shoulders. Don't
spare money. See to it that everything is good and as it should be. The
bills are to be sent to me."

Gordon answered an unspoken question of James. "Yes," he said, "he had
money, a considerable fortune, and he has no heirs--at least, I am as
sure as I need be that he has none. In his pockets were two bank books,
small check books, and a security register book. I have done them up in
a parcel. See to it that they are buried with him."

"But," said James.

"Oh, yes, I know. Sooner or later there will be advertisements in the
papers, and that sort of thing, but that will pass. God knows I would
not touch his money with the devil's pitchfork, nor allow anybody whom I
loved to touch it. Let him be buried under the name by which he was
known here. It is not the name, needless to say, on the bank books.
While living under other than his rightful name, he must have gone to
New York in person to supply himself with cash. There was some two
hundred dollars in bank notes in his wallet. That is with the other
things. Let the whole be buried with him, and see to it that Drake does
not discover it. You had better take the parcel now. Open the right
drawer of the table, and you will find it in the corner. Then, after
breakfast, you had better see Drake at once. I will attend to the
patients to-day."

"You are not able."

"Able is a word which I have eliminated from my vocabulary as applied to
myself."

The funeral, which was held the next afternoon in the parlor of the
hotel, was at once a ghastly and a grotesque function. The two doctors,
the undertaker and his assistant, Georgie K. and the bar-tender, and
Mrs. Slocum with a female friend, and a man, evidently the boarder to
whom she had referred, were the only persons present. The boarder wore a
hat which had belonged to the dead man. It was many sizes too large for
his grayish blond, foolish little head, and, when he put it on, it
nearly obscured his eyes. Mrs. Slocum sniffed audibly through the
service, which was short, being conducted by the old Presbyterian
clergyman of Alton. He hardly spoke