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 off to polish them, put them on again, and began to search through his many pockets—and the many papers in them—for the letter.

Meanwhile he did not interrupt his explanations. His son, he confided, was deaf and dumb, and they had come to New York to have him taught hp-reading at the Deaf and Dumb Institute. He had transferred his business from Chicago and opened offices in the Cranmer building, but he had found it impossible to leave the boy alone in a hotel, even though he had engaged a young woman from the Institute to come to their rooms every morning to give him instruction in lip reading. The boy, to tell the truth, was backward. Of course. Naturally.

Barney looked it. He was regarding the poses of Lincoln’s cabinet with a dull endurance.

Still in pursuit of the letter, Babbing had taken out his pocket-book, and in searching through it he spilled out a number of hundred dollar bills on the floor. She instantly