his life."

"You shall see the stuff," I said.

"Oh, by all means, and the quicker the better. Cohen is waiting at the
hotel for me now--at the foot of the front stairway, and he may suspect
any minute that I was mean enough to slink down the back stairs and out
through an alley. In fact, I'm rather excited at the prospect of seeing
that furniture--Cohen condemned it so bitterly."

"He sent an offer of six hundred dollars for it last night," I said.
Hereupon my guest became truly excited.

"He _did_--six hundred--_Cohen_ did? I don't wish to be rude, old
chap, but would you mind hastening? That is more eloquent than all your
story."

For half an hour, notwithstanding his eagerness, Mr. James Walsingham
Price succumbed to the manner of Miss Caroline. Noting the lack of
compunction with which she played upon him before my very eyes, I
divined that the late Colonel Lansdale had not found the need of pistols
entirely done away with even by the sacrament of marriage.

Not until Clem announced "Mr. Cohen" did the self-confessed collector
cease to be a man.

"Not at home," said Miss Caroline, crisply. Price grinned with
appreciation and fell to examining the furniture in strange ways.

It was a busy day for him, but I could see that he found it enjoyable,
and strangely was it borne in upon me that Miss Caroline's ancient stuff
was in some sense desirable.

More than once did Price permit some sign of emotion to be read in his
face--as when the sixth chair of a certain set was at last found
supporting a water-pail in the kitchen. The house was not large, but it
was crowded, and Price was frankly surprised at the number of things it
held.

At six o'clock he went to dine with me, Miss Caroline having told him
that I was authorized to act for her on any proposal he might have to
make.

"You have saved me again," he said warmly, in the midst of Clem's
dinner. "I assure you, Major, that hotel is infamous. I'm surprised, you
know, that something isn't done about it by the authorities."

I had to confess that the City Hotel was very highly regarded by most of
our citizens.

Again, after a brief interval of stupefaction, did James Walsingham
Price call upon his Maker. "And yet," he murmured, "we are spending
millions annually to impose mere theology upon savages far less
benighted. Think for a moment what a tithe of that money would do for
these poor people. Take the matter of green salads alone--to say nothing
of sou