them out in the name
of my secretary, Mr. Expectant Dobbs. They will perhaps repay him for
the extra clerical labor required in the prosecution of your claim. He
is a worthy young man. Although not a public officer, yet he is so near
to me that perhaps I am wrong in permitting him to accept a fee for
private interests. An American representative cannot be too cautious,
Mr. Wiles. Perhaps you had better have also a blank transfer. The stock
is, I understand, yet in the future. Mr. Dobbs, though talented and
praiseworthy, is poor; he may wish to realize. If some--ahem! some
FRIEND--better circumstanced should choose to advance the cash to him
and run the risk,--why, it would only be an act of kindness."

"You are proverbially generous, Mr. Gashwiler," said Wiles, opening
and shutting his left eye like a dark lantern on the benevolent
representative.

"Youth, when faithful and painstaking, should be encouraged," replied
Mr. Gashwiler. "I lately had occasion to point this out in a few remarks
I had to make before the Sabbath school reunion at Remus. Thank you, I
will see that they are--ahem!--conveyed to him. I shall give them to him
with my own hand," he concluded, falling back in his chair, as if
the better to contemplate the perspective of his own generosity and
condescension. Mr. Wiles took his hat and turned to go. Before he
reached the door Mr. Gashwiler returned to the social level with a
chuckle:

"You say this woman, this Garcia's niece, is handsome and smart?"

"Yes."

"I can set another woman on the track that'll euchre her every time!"

Mr. Wiles was too clever to appear to notice the sudden lapse in the
Congressman's dignity, and only said, with his right eye:

"Can you?"

"By G-d, I WILL, or I don't know how to represent Remus."

Mr. Wiles thanked him with his right eye, and looked a dagger with his
left. "Good," he said, and added persuasively: "Does she live here?"

The Congressman nodded assent. "An awfully handsome woman,--a particular
friend of mine!" Mr. Gashwiler here looked as if he would not mind to
have been rallied a little over his intimacy with the fair one; but
the astute Mr. Wiles was at the same moment making up his mind, after
interpreting the Congressman's look and manner, that he must know this
fair incognita if he wished to sway Gashwiler. He determined to bide his
time, and withdrew.

The door was scarcely closed upon him when another knock diverted Mr.
Gashwiler's attention