buildin',
from marble decks to gold maintruck, if we'd said the word. Fifty
yellin' lunatics was on hand to give it to us; the other two hundred was
joyfully mutilatin' the baldhead.

"Well, I wanted to get away, and so did Sim, I guess; but the crowd
wouldn't let us. We'd got to have a drink; hogsheads of drinks. That was
the best joke on Eddie Lewisburg that ever was. Come on! We MUST come
on! Whee! Wow!

"I don't know how it would have ended if some one hadn't butted head
first through the mob and grabbed me by the shoulder. I was ready to
fight by this time, and maybe I'd have begun to fight if the chap who
grabbed me hadn't been a few inches short of seven foot high. And,
besides that, I knew him. 'Twas Sam Holden, a young feller I knew when
he boarded here one summer. His wife boarded here, too, only she wa'n't
his wife then. Her name was Grace Hargrave and she was a fine girl.
Maybe you remember 'em, Sol?"

The depot master nodded.

"I remember 'em well," he said. "Liked 'em both--everybody did."

"Yes. Well, he knew us and was glad to see us.

"'It IS you!' he sings out. 'By George! I thought it was when I came on
the floor just now. My! but I'm glad to see you. And Mr. Phinney, too!
Bully! Clear out and let 'em alone, you Indians.'

"The crowd didn't want to let us alone, but Sam got us clear somehow,
and out of the Exchange Buildin' and into the back room of a kind of
restaurant. Then he gets chairs for us, orders cigars, and shakes hands
once more.

"'To think of seein' you two in New York!' he says, wonderin'. 'What are
you doin' here? When did you come? Tell us about it.'

"So we told him about our pleasure cruise, and what had happened to us
so fur. It seemed to tickle him 'most to death.

"'Grace and I are keepin' house, in a modest way, uptown,' says Sam,
'and she'll be as glad to see you as I am. You're comin' up to dinner
with me to-night, and you're goin' to make us a visit, you know,' he
says.

"Well, if we didn't know it then, we learned it right away. Nothin'
that me or Simeon could say would make him change the course a point. So
Phinney went up to the Golconda House and got our bags, and at half-past
four that afternoon the three of us was in a hired hack bound uptown.

"On the way Sam was full of fun as ever. He laughed and joked, and asked
questions about East Harniss till you couldn't rest. All of a sudden he
slaps his knee and sings out:

"'There! I knew I'd forgotten someth