emarked, that the Sabeans who
so troubled the sons of Job seemed to have migrated in a body to
Kansas and Nebraska, and that several thousand head of cattle seemed
mysteriously to vanish, a la Colonel Clay, into the pure air of the
prairies just before each branding.

However, we were fortunate in avoiding the incursions of the Colonel
himself, who must have migrated meanwhile on some enchanted carpet
to other happy hunting-grounds.

It was chill October before we found ourselves safe back in New
York, en route for England. So long a term of freedom from the
Colonel's depredations (as Charles fondly imagined--but I will not
anticipate) had done my brother-in-law's health and spirits a world
of good; he was so lively and cheerful that he began to fancy his
tormentor must have succumbed to yellow fever, then raging in New
Orleans, or eaten himself ill, as we nearly did ourselves, on a
generous mixture of clam-chowder, terrapin, soft-shelled crabs,
Jersey peaches, canvas-backed ducks, Catawba wine, winter cherries,
brandy cocktails, strawberry-shortcake, ice-creams, corn-dodger,
and a judicious brew commonly known as a Colorado corpse-reviver.
However that may be, Charles returned to New York in excellent
trim; and, dreading in that great city the wiles of his antagonist,
he cheerfully accepted the invitation of his brother millionaire,
Senator Wrengold of Nevada, to spend a few days before sailing in
the Senator's magnificent and newly-finished palace at the upper
end of Fifth Avenue.

"There, at least, I shall be safe, Sey," he said to me plaintively,
with a weary smile. "Wrengold, at any rate, won't try to take me
in--except, of course, in the regular way of business."

Boss-Nugget Hall (as it is popularly christened) is perhaps the
handsomest brown stone mansion in the Richardsonian style on all
Fifth Avenue. We spent a delightful week there. The lines had fallen
to us in pleasant places. On the night we arrived Wrengold gave
a small bachelor party in our honour. He knew Sir Charles was
travelling without Lady Vandrift, and rightly judged he would prefer
on his first night an informal party, with cards and cigars, instead
of being bothered with the charming, but still somewhat hampering
addition of female society.

The guests that evening were no more than seven, all told, ourselves
included--making up, Wrengold said, that perfect number, an octave.
He was a nouveau riche himself--the newest of the new--commonly