ut it--but I've noticed that Angus and you both have
nice hands."

"Especially Angus!" said Helmsley, with a smile.

Her face reflected the smile.

"Yes. Especially Angus!"

After this little conversation Helmsley was very quiet and thoughtful.
Often indeed he sat with eyes closed, pretending to sleep, in order
inwardly to meditate on the plans he had most at heart. He saw no reason
to alter them,--though the idea presented itself once or twice as to
whether he should not reveal his actual identity to the clergyman who
visited him so often, and who was, apart from his sacred calling, not
only a thinking, feeling, humane creature, but a very perfect gentleman.
But on due reflection he saw that this might possibly lead to awkward
complications, so he still resolved to pursue the safer policy of
silence.

One evening, when Angus Reay had come in as usual to sit awhile and chat
with him before he went to bed, he could hardly control a slight nervous
start when Reay observed casually--

"By the way, David, that old millionaire I told you about, Helmsley,
isn't dead after all!"

"Oh--isn't he?" And Helmsley feigned to be affected with a troublesome
cough which necessitated his looking away for a minute. "Has he turned
up?"

"Yes--he's turned up. That is to say, that he's expected back in town
for the 'season,' as the Cooing Column of the paper says."

"Why, what's the Cooing Column?" asked Mary, laughing.

"The fashionable intelligence corner," answered Angus, joining in her
laughter. "I call it the Cooing Column, because it's the place where all
the doves of society, soiled and clean, get their little grain of
personal advertisement. They pay for it, of course. There it is that the
disreputable Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup gets it announced that she wore a
collar of diamonds at the Opera, and there the battered, dissipated Lord
'Jimmy' Jenkins has it proudly stated that his yacht is undergoing
'extensive alterations.' Who in the real work-a-day, sane world cares a
button whether his lordship Jenkins sails in his yacht or sinks in it!
And Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup's diamonds are only so much fresh fuel piled
on the burning anguish of starving and suffering men,--anguish which
results in anarchy. Any number of anarchists are bred from the Cooing
Column!"

"What would you have rich men do?" asked Helmsley suddenly. "If all
their business turns out much more successfully than they have ever
expected, and they make millions a