strangely cheerful and insisted upon shaking hands with the first one.
"Fine, Hyman, fine! I'm delighted to hear you say so. Your words lift a load of doubt from my mind. It came to me in there just now that I might be incurring that supper for nothing but my sins!"
"Have your choke," said Hyman, a little bitterly.
"I have, Hyman, I have had my 'choke'!" said James Walsingham Price, with a glance of disrelish toward the dining room.
It seemed clear to Billy Durgin, who reported this interview to me in a manner of able realism, that these men were both crooks of the first water.
Billy at once polished his star and cleaned and oiled his new 32-caliber "bull-dog." The promise of work ahead for the right man loomed more brightly than ever before in his exciting career.
While I discussed with Miss Caroline, that evening, the unpleasant mystery of her late caller, there came a note from him by messenger. He offered six hundred and twenty-one dollars for her furniture, the sum being written in large letters, so that it had the effect of being shouted from the page. He further expressed a wish to close the deal within the half hour, as he must leave town on the night train.
Had Miss Caroline been alone, she might have fallen. Even I was staggered, but not beyond recovery. The messenger bore back, at my suggestion, a refusal of the offer and a further refusal to consider
