this story. I would not like to say how far I kicked those ham-bones.
This German girl had several successors, and some of them suited as badly and left as abruptly as herself; but Euphemia never forgot the ungrateful stab given her by this “ham-bone girl,” as she always called her. It was her first wound of the kind, and it came in the very beginning of the campaign when she was all unused to this domestic warfare.
CHAPTER VII. TREATING OF AN UNSUCCESSFUL BROKER AND A DOG.
It was a couple of weeks, or thereabouts, after this episode that Euphemia came down to the gate to meet me on my return from the city. I noticed a very peculiar expression on her face. She looked both thoughtful and pleased. Almost the first words she said to me were these:
“A tramp came here to-day.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” I exclaimed. “That's the worst news I have had yet. I did hope that we were far enough from the line of travel to escape these scourges. How did you get rid of him? Was he impertinent?”
“You must not feel that way about all tramps,” said she. “Sometimes they are deserving of our charity, and ought to be helped. There is a great difference in them.”
“That may be,” I said; “but what of this one? When was he here, and when did he go?”
“He did not go at all. He is here now.”
“Here now!” I cried. “Where is he?”
“Do not call out so loud,” said Euphemia, putting her hand on my arm. “You will waken him. He is asleep.”
“Asleep!” said I. “A tramp? Here?”
“Yes. Stop, let me tell you about him. He told me his story, and it is a sad one. He is a middle-aged man—fifty perhaps—and has been rich. He was once a broker in Wall street, but lost money by the failure of various railroads—the Camden and Amboy, for one.”
“That hasn't failed,” I interrupted.
“Well then it was the Northern Pacific, or some other one of them—at any rate I know it was
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