all over again. He had brought his
money, and he expected to invest it, and to live upon the income until
he had begun to earn something. He had worked hard at his profession,
and he meant to work in New York, and to win his way in the end. He
knew almost nothing about the city--he faced it with the wide-open eyes
of a child.

One began to learn quickly, he found. It was like being swept into a
maelstrom: first the hurrying throngs on the ferry-boat, and then the
cabmen and the newsboys shouting, and the cars with clanging gongs;
then the swift motor, gliding between trucks and carriages and around
corners where big policemen shepherded the scurrying populace; and then
Fifth Avenue, with its rows of shops and towering hotels; and at last a
sudden swing round a corner--and their home.

"I have picked a quiet family place for you," Oliver had said, and that
had greatly pleased his brother. But he had stared in dismay when he
entered this latest "apartment hotel"--which catered for two or three
hundred of the most exclusive of the city's aristocracy--and noted its
great arcade, with massive doors of bronze, and its entrance-hall,
trimmed with Caen stone and Italian marble, and roofed with a vaulted
ceiling painted by modern masters. Men in livery bore their wraps and
bowed the way before them; a great bronze elevator shot them to the
proper floor; and they went to their rooms down a corridor walled with
blood-red marble and paved with carpet soft as a cushion. Here were six
rooms of palatial size, with carpets, drapery, and furniture of a
splendour quite appalling to Montague.

As soon as the man who bore their wraps had left the room, he turned
upon his brother.

"Oliver," he said, "how much are we paying for all this?"

Oliver smiled. "You are not paying anything, old man," he replied.
"You're to be my guests for a month or two, until you get your
bearings."

"That's very good of you," said the other; "--we'll talk about it
later. But meantime, tell me what the apartment costs."

And then Montague encountered his first full charge of New York
dynamite. "Six hundred dollars a week," said Oliver.

He started as if his brother had struck him. "Six hundred dollars a
week!" he gasped.

"Yes," said the other, quietly.

It was fully a minute before he could find his breath. "Brother," he
exclaimed, "you're mad!"

"It is a very good bargain," smiled the other; "I have some influence
with them."

Again there was