ther rare, isn't it?" I asked.

"Yes--perhaps so."

"And I suppose you are going to take him up and do for him, like the
others."

Peter picked up the poker and made a jab at the fire; then he answered
slowly:

"Well, Major, I can't tell yet--not positively. But he's certainly worth
saving."

CHAPTER VII

With the closing of the front door upon the finest Old Gentleman in the
World, a marked change took place in the mental mechanism of several of
our most important characters. The head of the firm of Breen & Co. was
so taken aback that for the moment that shrewdest of financiers was
undecided as to whether he or Parkins should rush out into the night
after the departing visitor and bring him back, and open the best in the
cellar. "Send a man out of my house," he said to himself, "whom Portman
couldn't get to his table except at rare intervals! Well, that's one on
me!"

The lid that covered the upper half of Parkins's intelligence also
received a jolt; it was a coal-hole lid that covered emptiness, but now
and then admitted the light.

"Might 'ave known from the clothes 'e wore 'e was no common PUR-son," he
said to himself. "To tell you the truth--" this to the second man in the
potato-bug waistcoat, when they were dividing between them the bottle
of "Extra Dry" three-quarters full, that Parkins had smuggled into the
pantry with the empty bottles ("Dead Men," Breen called them)--"to tell
you the truth, Frederick, when I took 'is 'at and coat hupstairs 'e give
me a real start 'e looked that respectable"

As to Jack, not only his mind but his heart were in a whirl.

Half the night he lay awake wondering what he could do to follow Peter's
advice while preserving his own ideals. He had quite forgotten that part
of the older man's counsel which referred to the dignity of work, even
of that work which might be considered as menial. If the truth must be
told, it was his vanity alone which had been touched by the suggestion
that in him might lay the possibility of reforming certain conditions
around him. He was willing, even anxious, to begin on Breen & Co.,
subjecting his uncle, if need be, to a vigorous overhauling. Nothing he
felt could daunt him in his present militant state, upheld, as he felt
that he was, by the approval of Peter. Not a very rational state of
mind, the Scribe must confess, and only to be accounted for by the fact
that Peter's talk, instead of clearing Jack's mind of old doubts, had
re