occasion. Men generally went out of his dark
and dingy shop and never more returned.

"Much money. Can do now?" affably.

"Can do," replied Warrington, slipping the treasures into a pocket.
What a struggle it had been to hold them! Somehow or other he had
always been able to meet the interest; though, often to accomplish this
feat he had been forced to go without tobacco for weeks.

There is a vein of superstition in all of us, deny it how we will.
Certain inconsequent things we do or avoid doing. We never walk home
on the opposite side of the street. We carry luck-stones and battered
pieces of copper that have ceased to serve as coins. We fill the
garret with useless junk. Warrington was as certain of the fact as he
was of the rising and the setting of the sun, that if he lost these
heirlooms, he never could go back to the old familiar world, the world
in which he had moved and lived and known happiness. Never again would
he part with them. A hundred thousand dollars, almost; with his simple
wants he was now a rich man.

"Buy ling?" asked the Chinaman. He rolled a mandarin's ring carelessly
across the show-case. "Gold; all heavy; velly old, velly good ling."

"What does it say?" asked Warrington, pointing to the characters.

"Good luck and plospeity; velly good signs."

It was an unusually beautiful ring, unusual in that it had no setting
of jade. Warrington offered three sovereigns for it. The Chinaman
smiled and put the ring away. Warrington laughed and laid down five
pieces of gold. The Chinaman swept them up in his lean dry hands. And
Warrington departed, wondering if she would accept such a token.

By four o'clock he arrived at the Chinese tailors in the Suley Pagoda
Road. He ordered a suit of pongee, to be done at noon the following
day. He added to this orders for four other suits, to be finished
within a week. Then he went to the shoemaker, to the hatter, to the
haberdasher. There was even a light Malacca walking-stick among his
purchases. A long time had passed since he had carried a cane. There
used to be, once upon a time, a dapper light bamboo which was known up
and down Broadway, in the restaurants, the more or less famous bars,
and in the lounging-rooms of a popular club. All this business because
he wanted her to realize what he had been and yet could be. Thus,
vanity sometimes works out a man's salvation. And it marked the end of
Warrington's recidivation.

When he rea