ight,--Wiles. Well, the stage driver, finally believing this, goes
to work and quietly and unostentatiously steals--I say, have you got a
cigar?"

"I'll get you one."

Harlowe disappeared in the adjoining room. Thatcher dragged Harlowe's
heavy, revolving desk chair, which never before had been removed
from its sacred position, to the fire, and began to poke the coals
abstractedly.

Harlowe reappeared with cigars and matches. Thatcher lit one
mechanically, and said, between the pulls:

"Do you--ever--talk--to yourself?"

"No!--why?"

"I thought I heard your voice just now in the other room. Anyhow, this
is an awful spooky place. If I stayed here alone half an hour, I'd fancy
that the Lord Chancellor up there would step down in his robes, out of
his frame, to keep me company."

"Nonsense! When I'm busy, I often sit here and write until after
midnight. It's so quiet!"

"D--mnably so!"

"Well, to go back to the papers. Somebody stole your bag, or you lost
it. YOU stole--"

"The driver stole," suggested Thatcher, so languidly that it could
hardly be called an interruption.

"Well, we'll say the driver stole, and passed over to you as his
accomplice, confederate, or receiver, certain papers belonging--"

"See here, Harlowe, I don't feel like joking in a ghostly law office
after midnight. Here are your facts. Yuba Bill, the driver, stole a bag
from this passenger, Wiles, or Smiles, and handed it to me to insure the
return of my own. I found in it some papers concerning my case. There
they are. Do with them what you like."

Thatcher turned his eyes again abstractedly to the fire.

Harlowe took out the first paper:

"A-w, this seems to be a telegram. Yes, eh? 'Come to Washington at
once.--Carmen de Haro.'"

Thatcher started, blushed like a girl, and hurriedly reached for the
paper.

"Nonsense. That's a mistake. A dispatch I mislaid in the envelope."

"I see," said the lawyer dryly.

"I thought I had torn it up," continued Thatcher, after an awkward
pause. I regret to say that here that usually truthful man elaborated a
fiction. He had consulted it a dozen times a day on the journey, and it
was quite worn in its enfoldings. Harlowe's quick eye had noticed this,
but he speedily became interested and absorbed in the other papers.
Thatcher lapsed into contemplation of the fire.

"Well," said Harlowe, finally turning to his client, "here's enough
to unseat Gashwiler, or close his mouth. As to the rest, it'