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Rh But this is asking too much. I'm sorry. But I got to be true to my oath—I got to be a hermit."

"Maybe," sneered Mr. Max, "he's got good reason for being a hermit. Maybe there's brass buttons and blue uniforms mixed up in it."

"You come from the great world of suspicion," answered the hermit, turning reproving eyes upon faim. "Your talk is natural—it goes with the life you lead. But it isn't true."

"And Mr. Max is the last who should insinuate," rebuked Mr. Magee. "Why, only last night he denounced suspicion, and bemoaned the fact that there is so much of it in the world."

"Well he might," replied the hermit. "Suspicion is the key-note of modern life—especially in New York." He drew the purple dressing-gown closer about his plump form. "I remember the last time I was in the big town, seeing a crowd of men in the grill-room of the Hoffman House. One of them—long, lean, like an eel—stooped down and whispered in the ear of a little fellow with a diamond horseshoe desecrating his haberdashery, and pointing to another man near by. 'No, I won't,' says the man with the diamonds,