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 declared, flinging away a cigar-stump and taking his legs down from the desk.

Then Peckham turned himself round to face the crowd, and said, in a tone of quiet conviction:

"The man was all right. If you only want anything bad enough, no price is too high to pay for it."

This was a sentiment which every one was bound to respect—every one, at least, excepting Hillerton.

"Sounds very well, Peckham," he said, "but it won't hold water."

The most surprising thing about Peckham's little speculations was that they all succeeded. It made the other men rather mad because he did not care more.

"But that's always the way," Freddy Dillingham remarked, with an air of profound philosophy. "It's the fellers that don't care a darn that have all the luck."

When Peckham sold out of the Libby Carew, he doubled his money, and the moment he touched the "Trailing Arbutus," up she went. By the first of May he found himself the possessor of nearly three thousand dollars' worth of "stuff" distributed among several ventures. Of course, he was credited with five