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 had only sent your president down to dinner here, I could have settled the thing in half a minute, Why, I could have bought the Buchonian from him while your clerks were sending me this." Wilton dropped his hand heavily on the blue-and-white correspondence, and the lawyer started.

"But, speaking frankly," the lawyer replied, "it is, if I may say so, perfectly inconceivable, even in the case of the most important legal documents, that any one should stop the three-forty express—the Induna—Our Induna, my dear sir."

"Absolutely!" my companion echoed; then to me in a lower tone: "You notice, again, the persistent delusion of wealth. I was called in when he wrote us that. You can see it is utterly impossible for the Company to continue to run their trains through the property of a man who may at any moment fancy himself divinely commissioned to stop all traffic. If he had only referred us to his lawyer—but, naturally, that he would not do, under the circumstances. A pity—a great pity. He is so young. By the way, it is curious, is it not, to note the absolute conviction in the voice of those who are similarly afflicted,—heartrending, I might say,—and the inability to follow a chain of connected thought."

"I can't see what you want," Wilton was saying to the lawyer.

"It need not be more than fourteen feet high—a really desirable structure, and it would be possible to grow pear-trees on the sunny side." The lawyer was speaking in an unprofessional voice. "There are few things pleasanter than to watch, so to say, one's own vine and