. New pity for this poor old wastrel
took hold upon him. "What were you going to do?"

"I was going to retire, captain," said Doc faintly. "My daughter's
husband--he owned a farm up in Cayuga County--well, he died and I was
planning to go up there and live with her."

"And sting all the boobs?" grinned Murtha not unsympathetically. "How
much money have you got?"

"Seventy-five cents."

"How much is the ticket?"

"About nine dollars," quavered Doc. "But I know a man down on Chatham
Square who might buy a block of stock in the Last Chance Gold Mining
Company; I could get the money that way."

"What's the Last Chance Gold Mining Company?" asked Murtha sharply.

"It's a company I'm going to organize. I'll tell you a secret, Murtha.
There's a vein of gold runs right through my daughter Louisa's cow
pasture--she doesn't know anything about it--"

"Oh, hell!" exclaimed Murtha. "Come along to the station. I'll let you
have the nine bones. And you can put me down for half a million of the
underwriting."

* * * * *

That same evening Mr. Tutt was toasting his carpet slippers before the
sea-coal fire in his library, sipping a hot toddy and rereading for the
eleventh time the "Lives of the Chancellors" when Miranda, who had not
yet finished washing the few dishes incident to her master's meager
supper, pushed open the door and announced that a lady was calling.

"She said you'd know her sho' enough, Mis' Tutt," grinned Miranda,
swinging her dishrag, "'case you and she used to live tergidder when you
was a young man."

This scandalous announcement did not have the startling effect upon the
respectable Mr. Tutt which might naturally have been anticipated, since
he was quite used to Miranda's forms of expression.

"It must be Mrs. Effingham," he remarked, closing the career of Lord
Eldon and removing his feet from the fender.

"Dat's who it is!" answered Miranda. "She's downstairs waitin' to come
up."

"Well, let her come," directed Mr. Tutt, wondering what his old
boarding-house keeper could want of him, for he had not seen Mrs.
Effingham for more than fifteen years, at which time she was well
provided with husband, three children and a going business. Indeed, it
required some mental adjustment on his part to recognize the withered
little old lady in widow's weeds and rusty black with a gold star on her
sleeve who so timidly, a moment later, followed Miranda into the room.

"I'm afr