rusty coat had a distinct hunch; but
he was radiantly happy talking of the rich Captain Carroll. He seemed
to taste the honey of the other man's riches and importance in his
own mouth. Willy Eddy did not know the meaning of envy. He had such a
fund of sympathetic imagination that he possessed the fair
possessions of others like a child with fairy tales.

"Is he president of all of them?" asked little Willy Eddy, with
gusto, and looked as if he himself held them all in his meagre
potato-stained hands.

"No," replied the barber, with importance--"no, he's more than a
president. A president is nothin' except a figger-head. I don't care
what he's president of, whether it is of this great country or of
railroads or what not. They could git along without the president,
but they can't without this gentleman. He's the promoter."

"Oh!" said the small man.

The milkman sighed wrathfully again. "Oh, hang it all!" he said.
"I've seed promoters. It's mostly their own pockets they promote."

"Well, I don't know," said the postmaster, as one with authority. "I
don't know. Captain Carroll was in the office the other day, and we
had a little talk, and it struck me that some of the ventures he is
interested in were quite promising. And it is different with a man of
his wealth. When a poor man takes up anything of the kind, you can
suspect, but this is different. He said to me that he had no
occasion, so far as the money was concerned, to turn his finger over
for any of them or to open his mouth concerning them. He said he
would not be afraid to stake every dollar he had in the world on them
if it was necessary."

Flynn had daintily anointed Rosenstein's shaven face with witch-hazel
and was now dusting it with powder. Tappan was slouching towards the
chair.

"Have you bought some of the stock?" the barber asked, abruptly, of
the postmaster, who smiled mysteriously and hedged.

"Well, maybe I have, and maybe again I haven't," said he. "Have you,
John?"

"Not yet," replied the barber. "I am deflecting upon the matter. It
requires considerable loggitation when a man has penuriously saved a
circumscribed sum from the sweat of his brow."

"That's so. Don't be rash, John," said Amidon.

It was not especially funny, but since Amidon intended it to be, they
all obligingly laughed, except Tappan, who set himself with a grunt
in the chair and had the white sheet of which Rosenstein had been
denuded tied around his neck.

Rosenstei