that, like sergeants, the blotter may be
sometimes mistaken?

WHEN THE LETTER CAME

"To-morrow it will come," Godfrey Krueger had said that night to his
landlord. "To-morrow it will surely come, and then I shall have money.
Soon I shall be rich, richer than you can think."

And the landlord of the Forsyth Street tenement, who in his heart
liked the gray-haired inventor, but who had rooms to let, grumbled
something about a to-morrow that never came.

"Oh, but it will come," said Krueger, turning on the stairs and
shading the lamp with his hand, the better to see his landlord's
good-natured face; "you know the application has been advanced. It is
bound to be granted, and to-night I shall finish my ship."

Now, as he sat alone in his room at his work, fitting, shaping, and
whittling with restless hands, he had to admit to himself that it was
time it came. Two whole days he had lived on a crust, and he was
starving. He had worked and waited thirteen hard years for the success
that had more than once been almost within his grasp, only to elude it
again. It had never seemed nearer and surer than now, and there was
need of it. He had come to the jumping-off place. All his money was
gone, to the last cent, and his application for a pension hung fire in
Washington unaccountably. It had been advanced to the last stage, and
word that it had been granted might be received any day. But the days
slipped by and no word came. For two days he had lived on faith and a
crust, but they were giving out together. If only--

Well, when it did come, what with his back pay for all those years, he
would have the means to build his ship, and hunger and want would be
forgotten. He should have enough. And the world would know that
Godfrey Krueger was not an idle crank.

"In six months I shall cross the ocean to Europe in twenty hours in my
air-ship," he had said in showing the landlord his models, "with as
many as want to go. Then I shall become a millionnaire and shall make
you one, too." And the landlord had heaved a sigh at the thought of
his twenty-seven dollars, and doubtingly wished it might be so.

Weak and famished, Krueger bent to his all but finished task. Before
morning he should know that it would work as he had planned. There
remained only to fit the last parts together. The idea of building an
air-ship had come to him while he lay dying with scurvy, as they
thought, in a Confederate prison, and he had never abandoned