ew name and address as soon as you have
got safely away.

YOUR OLD PAL.

Doc Turner's own fingers were trembling as he passed this missive to
Wallingford, whose expectant eyes had been furtively fixed upon the
pile of letters for some time.

"Too bad, old man," said Turner, tremulously aghast. "Couldn't help
reading it."

"My God!" exclaimed Wallingford most dramatically. "It has come at
last, just as I had settled down to lead a quiet, decent, respectable
life, with every prospect in my favor!" He sprang up and looked at his
watch. "I'll have to move on again!" he dismally declared; "and I
suppose they'll chase me from one cover to another until they finally
get me; but I'll never give up! Please see what's coming to me, Mr.
Turner; you have the cash in the house to pay me, I know; and kindly
get my stock certificates from the safe."

Slowly and thoughtfully Turner took from the safe Wallingford's four
hundred and ninety-seven shares of stock, in four certificates of a
hundred shares each, one of fifty and one of forty-seven. Wallingford
hurried them into an envelope, sitting down to write the address upon
it.

"What are you going to do with those?" asked Turner with a thoughtful
frown.

"Send them to my friend in Boston and have him sell them for what he
can get," replied Wallingford with a sigh. "If the purchasers send any
one here to find out about the business, you'll, of course, give them
every facility for investigation."

"To be sure; to be sure," returned Turner. "But, say--"

He paused a moment, and Wallingford, in the act of writing a hasty
note to go with the stock certificates, hesitated, his pen poised just
above the paper.

"What is it?" he asked.

"You'll probably have to sell those shares at a sacrifice,
Wallingford."

"I have no doubt," he admitted.

Doc Turner's palms rubbed out a slow decision while Wallingford
scratched away at his letter.

"Um-m-m-m-m-m-m--I say!" began Turner gropingly. "Rather than have
those shares fall into the hands of strangers we might possibly make
you an offer for them ourselves. Wait till I see Squinch."

He saw Squinch, he saw Tom Fester, he telephoned to Andy Grout, and
the four of them gathered in solemn conclave. The consensus of the
meeting was that if they could secure Wallingford's shares at a low
enough figure it was a good thing. Not one man among them but had
regretted deeply the necessity of sharing any portio