d spoke. "Mine is Stacey."

The younger man mused a few minutes, as if he had forgotten his new
acquaintance. Suddenly he roused up.

"Say, would you take a country school several miles out?"

"I think I would, if nothing better offered."

"Well, in my old district they're without a teacher. It's six miles out,
and it isn't a lovely neighborhood! However, they will pay fifty dollars
a month; that's ten dollars extra for the scrimmages. They wanted me to
teach this winter--my sister tackles it in summer--but, great Peter! I
can't waste my time teaching school, when I can run up to Chicago and
take a shy at the pit and make a whole term's wages in thirty minutes!"

"I don't understand," said Stacey.

"Wheat Exchange. I've got a lot of friends in the pit, and I can come in
any time on a little deal. I'm no Jim Keene, but I hope to get cash
enough to handle five thousand. I wanted the old gent to start me up in
it, but he said, 'Nix come arouse.' Fact is, I dropped the money he gave
me to go through college with." He smiled at Stacey's disapproving look.
"Yes, indeedy; there's where the jar came into our tender relations. Oh,
I call on the Governor--always when I've got a wad. I have fun with
him." He smiled brightly. "Ask him if he don't need a little cash to pay
for hog-killin', or something like that." He laughed again. "No, I
didn't graduate at Ann Arbor. Funny how things go, ain't it? I was on my
way back the third year, when I stopped in to see the pit--it's one o'
the sights of Chicago, you know--and Billy Krans saw me looking over the
rail, I went in, won, and then took a flyer on December. Come a big
slump, and I failed to materialize at school."

"What did you do then?" asked Stacey, to whom this did not seem
humorous.

"I wrote a contrite letter to the Governor, stating case, requesting
forgiveness--and money. No go! Couldn't raise neither. I then wrote,
casting him off. 'You are no longer father of mine.'" He smiled again
radiantly. "You should have seen me the next time I went home! Plug hat!
Imported suit! Gold watch! Diamond shirt-stud! Cost me $200 to paralyze
the General, but I did it. My glory absolutely turned him white as a
sheet. I knew what he thought, so I said: 'Perfectly legitimate, Dad.
The walls of Joliet are not gaping for me.' That about half-fetched
him--calling him _Dad_, I mean; but he can't get reconciled to my
business. 'Too many ups and downs,' he says. Fact is, he thinks it's
gam