ugh
the legislature this winter. You'd best buy there."

"I never buy town lots," said Minorkey, coughing despairingly, "never! I
run no risks. I take my interest at three and five per cent a month on a
good mortgage, with a waiver, and let other folks take risks."

But the hopeful fat gentleman evidently took risks and slept soundly.
There was no hypothetical town, laid out hypothetically on paper, in
whose hypothetical advantages he did not covet a share.

"You see," he resumed, "I buy low--cheap as dirt--and get the rise. Some
towns must get to be cities. I have a little all round, scattered here
and there. I am sure to have a lucky ticket in some of these lotteries."

[Illustration: MR. MINORKEY AND THE FAT GENTLEMAN.]

Mr. Minorkey only coughed and shook his head despondently, and said that
"there was nothing so good as a mortgage with a waiver in it. Shut down
in short order if you don't get your interest, if you've only got a
waiver. I always shut down unless I've got five per cent after maturity.
But I have the waiver in the mortgage anyhow."

As the stage drove on, up one grassy slope and down another, there was
quite a different sort of a conversation going on in the other end of the
coach. Charlton found many things which suggested subjects about which he
and Miss Minorkey could converse, notwithstanding the strange contrast in
their way of expressing themselves. He was full of eagerness,
positiveness, and a fresh-hearted egoism. He had an opinion on
everything; he liked or disliked everything; and when he disliked
anything, he never spared invective in giving expression to his
antipathy. His moral convictions were not simply strong--they were
vehement. His intellectual opinions were hobbies that he rode under whip
and spur. A theory for everything, a solution of every difficulty, a
"high moral" view of politics, a sharp skepticism in religion, but a
skepticism that took hold of him as strongly as if it had been a faith.
He held to his _non credo_ with as much vigor as a religionist holds to
his creed.

Miss Minorkey was just a little irritating to one so enthusiastic. She
neither believed nor disbelieved anything in particular. She liked to
talk about everything in a cool and objective fashion; and Charlton was
provoked to find that, with all her intellectual interest in things, she
had no sort of personal interest in anything. If she had been a
disinterested spectator, dropped down from another spher