decently."

"Well, he believed it of you," says I. "You don't stand to lose so much either, by the way. Here! Wait until I write a voucher for twenty per cent. of twelve thousand five hundred. His figures, you know. There! Now you can collect from Judson and call for name Number Two."

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CHAPTER III

PEEKING IN ON PEDDERS

Who started that dope about Heaven givin' us our relations but thanks be we can pick friends to suit ourselves? Anyway, it's phony. Strikes me we often have friends wished on us; sort of accumulate 'em by chance, as we do appendicitis, or shingles, or lawsuits. And at best it's a matter of who you meet most, and how.

Take J. Bayard Steele. Think I'd ever hunted him out and extended the fraternal grip, or him me? Not if everyone else in the world was deaf and dumb and had the itch! We're about as much alike in our tastes and gen'ral run of ideas as Bill Taft and Bill Haywood; about as congenial as our bull terrier and the chow dog next door. Yet here we are, him hailin' me as Shorty, and me callin' him anything from J. B. to Old Top, and confabbin' reg'lar most every day, as chummy as you please.

All on account of our bein' mixed up in carryin' out this batty will of Pyramid Gordon's. First off I didn't think I'd have to see him more'n once a month, and then only for a short33 session; but since he put through that first deal and collected his twenty-four hundred commission, he's been showin' up at the studio frequent, with next to no excuse for comin'.

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You remember how he drew Twombley-Crane as the first one that he had to unload a kind and gen'rous act on, and how I made him give up the picture that he'd gloated over so long? Well, J. Bayard can't seem to get over the way that turned out. Here he'd been forced into doin' something nice for a party he had a grudge against, has discovered that Twombley-Crane ain't such a bad lot after all, and has been well paid for it besides, out of money left by his old enemy.

"Rather a remarkable set of circumstances, eh, Shorty?" says he, tiltin' back comf'table in one of my front office chairs and lightin' up a fresh twenty-five-cent cigar. "An instance of virtue being rewarded 

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