the supply of pots was giving out; we began to use tinware more about that time. That was the end of it, anyhow.

We boys got square, too, with the watchmen. We knew their habit of stowing themselves away in the stagecoach that stood in the market-place when they had cried the hour at ten o'clock, and we caught them napping there one dark night when we were coming home from a party. The stage had doors that locked on the outside. We slammed them shut and ran the conveyance with them in it, wildly gesticulating from the windows, through the main street of the town, amid the cheers of the citizens whom the racket aroused from their slumbers. We were safe enough. The watchmen were not anxious to catch us, maddened as they were by our prank, and they were careful not to report us either. I chuckled at that exploit more than once when, in years long after, I went the rounds of the midnight streets with Haroun-al-Roosevelt, as they called New York's Police Commissioner, to find his patrolmen sleep

ing soundly on their posts when they should have been out catching thieves. Human nature-police human nature, anyhow-is not so different, after all, in the Old World and in the New.

With Twelfth-night our Yule came to an end. On that night, if a girl would know her fate, she must go to bed walking backward and throw a shoe over her left shoulder, or hide it under her pillow, I forget which, perhaps both, and say aloud a verse that prayed the Three Holy Kings to show her the man

Whose table I must set,
Whose bed I must spread,
Whose name I must bear,
Whose bride I must be.

The man who appeared to her in her sleep was to be her husband. There was no escape from it, and consequently she did not try. He was her Christmas gift, and she took him for better or for worse. Let us hope that the Nisse played her no scurvy trick, and that it was for better always.

"I

HOPE your passenger has n't missed his train," observed the ferryman to Mr. Jimmy Fallows, who sat on the river bank with the painter of his rickety little naphtha launch held loosely in his hand.

"Mr. Opp?" said Jimmy. "I bet he did. If there is one person in the world that 's got a talent for missing things, it 's Mr. Opp. I never seen him that he had n't just missed gettin' a thousand dollar job, or inventin' a patent, or bein' hurt when he had took out a accident policy. If he did ketch a train, like enough it was goin' the wrong way."

Jimmy had been waiting since nine in the morning, and it was now well past noon. He was a placid gentleman of curvilinear type, short of limb and large of girth. His trousers, of that morose hue termed by the country people "plum," reached to his armpits, and his hat, large and felt and weather-beaten, was only prevented from eclipsing his head by the stubborn resistance of two small, knoblike ears.

"Mr. Opp ain't been back to the Cove for a long while, has he?" asked the ferryman, whose intellectual life depended solely upon the crumbs of information scattered by chance passers-by.

"Goin' on two years," said Mr. Fallows. "Reckon he 's been so busy formin' trusts and buyin' out railways and promotin' things generally that he ain't had any time to come back home. It's his step-pa's funeral that 's bringin' him now. The only time city folks seem to want to

Samuel Daniel.

Sandy," etc.

see their kin folks in the country is when they are dead."

"Ain't that him a-comin' down the bank?" asked the ferryman, shading his eyes with his hands.

Mr. Fallows, with some difficulty, got to his feet.

"Yes, that's him all right. Hustlin' to beat the band. Wonder if he takes me for a street car.

Coming with important stride down. the wharf, and whistling as he came, was a small man of about thirty-five. In one hand he carried a large suit-case, and in the other a new and shining grip. On both were painted, in letters designed to be seen, "D. Webster Opp, Kentucky."

In fact, everything about him was evidently designed to be seen. His new suit of insistent plaid, his magnificent tie sagging with the weight of a colossal scarfpin, his brown hat, his new tan shoes, all demanded individual and instant attention.

The only insignificant thing about Mr. Opp was himself. His slight, undeveloped body seemed to be in a chronic state of apology for failing properly to set off the glorious raiment wherewith it was clothed. His pock-marked face, wide at the temples, sloped to a small, pointed chin, which, in turn, sloped precipitously into a long, thin neck. It was Mr. Opp's eyes, however, that one saw first, for they were singularly vivid, with an expression that made strangers sometimes pause in the street to ask him if he had spoken to them. Small, pale, and red of rim, they nevertheless held the look of intense hunger

hunger for the hope or the happiness of the passing moment.

As he came bustling down to the water's-edge he held out a friendly hand to Jimmy Fallows.

"How are you, Jimmy?" he said in a voice freighted with importance. "Hope I have n't kept you waiting long. Several matters of business come up at the last and final moment, and I missed the morning train."

Jimmy, who was pouring gasolene into a tank in the launch, treated the ferryman to a prodigious wink.

"Oh, not more 'n four or five hour," he said, casting side glances of mingled scorn and admiration at Mr. Opp's attire. "It is a good thing it was the funeral you was tryin' to get to instid of the deathbed."

"Oh, that reminds me," said Mr. Opp, suddenly exchanging his air of cheerfulness for one of becoming gravity-"what time is the funeral obsequies going to take place?"

"Whenever we git there," said Jimmy, pushing off the launch and waving his hand to the ferryman. "You 're one of the chief mourners, and I 'm the undertaker; there ain't much danger in us gettin' left."

Mr. Opp deposited his baggage carefully on the seat, and spread his coat across the new grip to keep .it from getting splashed.

"How long was Mr. Moore sick?" he asked, fanning himself with his hat.

"Well," said Jimmy, "he was in a dangerous and critical condition for about twenty-one years, accordin' to his own account. I been seein' him durin' that time on a average of four times a day, and last night when I seen him in his coffin it was the first time the old gentleman failed to ask me to give him a drink on account of his poor health."

"Is Ben there?" asked Mr. Opp, studying a time-table, and making a note in his memorandum-book.

He was

"Your brother Ben? Yes; he come this mornin' just before I left. cussin' considerable because you was n't there, so 's they could go on and git through. He wants to start back to Missouri to-night."

"Is he out at the house?"
"No; he 's at Your Hotel.”

Mr. Opp looked up in surprise, and Jimmy chuckled.

"That there's the name of my new hotel. Started up sence you went away. Me and old man Tucker been running boardin'-houses side by side all these What did he do last summer but go out and git him a sign as big as the side of the house, and git Nick Fenny to paint ‘Our Hotel' on it; then he put it up right across the sidewalk, from the gate clean out to the road. I did n't say nothin', but let the boys keep on a-kiddin' me till the next day; then I got me a sign jus' like his, with 'Your Hotel' on it, and put it up crost my sidewalk. He 'd give a pretty if they was both down now; but he won't take his down while mine is up, and I ain't got no notion of taking it down."

"Yes," said Mr. Opp, absently, for his mind was still on the time-table; "I see that there's an accommodation that departs out of Coreyville in the neighborhood of noon to-morrow. It's a little unconvenient, I'm afraid, but do you think you could get me back in time to take it?"

"Why, what's yer hurry?" asked Jimmy, steering for mid-stream. "I thought you'd come to visit a spell, with all them bags and things."

Mr. Opp carelessly tossed back the sleeve of the coat, to display more fully the name on the suit-case. "Them 's drummers' samples," he said almost reverently-"the finest line of shoes that have ever been put out by any house in the United States, bar none."

"Why, I thought you was in the insurance business," said Jimmy.

"Oh, no; that was last year, just previous to my reporting on a newspaper. This"-and Mr. Opp tried to spread out his hands, but was slightly deterred by the size of his cuffs-"this is the chance I been looking for all my life. It takes brains and a' educated nerve, and a knowledge of the world. I ought to create considerable capital in the next few years. And just as soon as I do"-and Mr. Opp leaned earnestly toward Jimmy, and tapped one finger upon the palm of his other hand-"just as soon as I do, I intend to buy up all the land lying between Turtle Turtle Creek and the river. There's enough oil under that there