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Rh Carthew met him in the door.

“Come away, come away from here,” said Carthew; and when they were clear of the house, “All's up!” he added.

“Oh, you've heard of the sale, then?” said Wicks.

“The sale!” cried Carthew. “I declare I had forgotten it.” And he told of the voice in the telephone, and the maddening question: “Why did you want to buy the Flying Scud?”

This circumstance, coming on the back of the monstrous improbabilities of the sale, was enough to have shaken the reason of Immanuel Kant. The earth seemed banded together to defeat them; the stones and the boys on the street appeared to be in possession of their guilty secret. Flight was their one thought. The treasure of the Currency Lass they packed in waist-belts, expressed their chests to an imaginary address in British Columbia, and left San Francisco the same afternoon, booked for Los Angeles.

The next day they pursued their retreat by the Southern Pacific route, which Carthew followed on his way to England; but the other three branched off for Mexico.


 * The other day (at Manihiki of all places) I had the pleasure to meet Dodd. We sat some two hours in the neat, little, toy-like church, set with pews after the manner of Europe, and inlaid with mother-of-pearl in the style (I suppose) of the New Jerusalem. The natives, who are decidedly the