hirty-five?"

"Very quickly, Billy, if you feel that way about it." And the friction
of Mr. Turner's palms was perfectly audible. "Then I can have your
share of stock?"

"You most certainly can, and I'll guarantee to buy up three other
shares in the office if you want them."

"Good!" exclaimed Turner, not having expected to accomplish so much of
his object so easily. "The minute you lay me down those four shares
I'll hand you four hundred dollars."

"Eight," Billy calmly corrected him. "Those shares are worth a hundred
dollars apiece any place now. Mine's worth more than two hundred to
me."

"Nonsense," protested the other. "Tell you what I'll do, though. I'll
pay you two hundred dollars for your share and a hundred dollars
apiece for the others."

"Two," insisted Billy. "We've talked it all over in the office, and
we've agreed to pool our stock and stand out for two hundred apiece,
if anybody wants it. As a matter of fact, I have all four shares in my
possession at this moment," and he displayed the certificates, holding
up his lantern so that Turner could see them.

The sight of the actual stock, the three other shares which the astute
Billy had secured on the promise of a hundred and fifty dollars per
share immediately after Wallingford's pointer, clenched the business.

It was scarcely as much a shock to Wallingford as the Turner crowd had
expected it to be when those gentlemen, having purchased four hundred
and ninety-nine shares of Wallingford's stock at his own price, sat
in the new stock-holders' meeting, at the reorganization upon which
they had insisted, with five hundred and three shares, and J. Rufus
made but feeble protest when the five of them, voting themselves into
the directorate, decided to put the founder of the company on an
extremely meager salary as assistant manager, and Mr. Turner on a
slightly larger salary as chief manager.

"There's no use of saying anything," he concluded philosophically.
"You gentlemen have played a very clever game and I lose; that's all
there is to it."

He thereupon took up the burden of the work and pushed through the
matter of new memberships and of collections with a vigor and ability
that could not but commend itself to his employers. The second week's
collections were now coming in, and it was during the following week
that a large hollow wheel with a handle and crank, mounted on an axle
like a patent churn, was brought into the now vacated room of the