ent! There'll be a raise coming to you next month--quite a
substantial one. We've been looking you up."

"Oh, sir, how can I----"

"There, there! We mustn't stop to talk about it now. If you must thank
somebody for it thank this young scoundrel here. It was he put me up to
it."

There was time for nothing further. Swept onward by crowds that surged
behind, the McGregors, like chips on the crest of a mammoth wave, were
borne forward and out of the tent.

In the open air Mrs. McGregor wiped her perspiring brow.

"Now," began she, turning accusingly on her son, "perhaps you will be
so good as to tell us what all this is about. How came you to know Mr.
John Coulter well enough to be treating him like a long-lost brother?
And what had you to do with Hal and Louise and the Coulter mills? I
feel as if I were going crazy! One minute you don't even know Mr.
Coulter by sight and the next he is sending us a Christmas dinner and
you are fairly falling on his neck."

Carl shook with laughter.

"Oh, Mother, it's all so rich--so perfectly corking!" he cried. "You
couldn't half appreciate it if I told you."

"I could try," came curtly from Mrs. McGregor.

But her son did not heed her.

"To think of that being Mr. John Coulter," chuckled he. "And, oh, the
things I said to him! I tremble to recall them. I told him Corcoran was
a low-down skunk, I know that. And I gushed on a lot about Hal and
Louise. I only wish I could remember what I did say. Jove! He must have
split his sides laughing."

"When? When did you do all this?" interrogated the lad's mother
impatiently.

"Oh, when was it?" ruminated Carl, struggling to collect his scattered
wits. "It seems ages and ages ago that all that happened. It was before
Christmas, I'm certain of that."

"And you went riding with Mr. Coulter? I heard you saying something
about it."

"Yes."

"You actually went to ride with him?"

"I sure did!"

"Well, all I can say is I should like to know when all these miracles
took place," repeated Carl's mother. "Where was I, and why wasn't I
told? You might at least have mentioned it at home."

"I know it, Ma," apologized Carl with disarming frankness. "I did try
twice to tell you but the chance never seemed to come right; and by and
by it got to be so long ago that I forgot all about it."

"Forgot you went motoring with Mr. John Coulter?" Mrs. McGregor spoke
with incredulity.

"You see I didn't know at the time that it was Mr. John Cou