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 Hillerton merely became, if possible, more stringent in the matter of securities.

"We might as well take a mortgage on the town, and done with it," he remarked to his confidential clerk one Saturday evening. "We shall own it all in six months, anyhow!"

Peckham, the confidential clerk, shrugged his shoulders, and said he "guessed it was about so."

Hillerton's confidential clerk usually assented to the dictum of his principal. It saved trouble and hurt nobody. Not that Lewis Peckham was without opinions of his own; but he took no special interest in them, and rarely put himself to the trouble of defending them.

The young man's countenance had never been an expressive one, and during the three years he had spent in Hillerton's employ, his face had lost what little mobility it had ever possessed. He was a pale, hollow-chested individual, with a bulging forehead, curiously marked eyebrows, and a prominent and sensitive nose. A gentleman, too, as anybody could see, but a gentleman of a singularly unsocial disposition. He looked ten years older than he was—an advantage which Hillerton recognized. His grave, unencouraging manner had