"The Interurban," I said. "A dummy company?" said Mr. Jason. "Lively enough to bid something over a hundred thousand to the city for its franchise," I replied. Judd Jason, with a queer look, got up and went to a desk in a dark corner, and after rummaging for a few moments in one of the pigeon-holes, drew forth a glass cylinder, which he held out as he approached me. "You get it, Mr. Paret," he said. "What is it?" I asked, "a bomb!" "That," he announced, as he twisted the tube about in his long fingers, holding it up to the light, "is the finest brand of cigars ever made in Cuba. A gentleman who had every reason to be grateful to me--I won't say who he was--gave me that once. Well, the Lord made me so's I can't appreciate any better tobacco than those five-cent 'Bobtails' Monahan's got downstairs, and I saved it. I saved it for the man who would put something over me some day, and--you get it." "Thank you," I said, unconsciously falling in with the semi-ceremony of his manner. "I do not flatter myself that the solution I have suggested did not also occur to you." "You'll smoke it?" he asked. "Surely." "Now? Here with me?" "Certainly," I agreed, a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared at the door. "Bobtails," said Mr. Jason, laconically. "It's them I thought ye'd be wanting," said the saloon-keeper, holding out a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began smoking reflectively. I gazed about the mean room, with its litter of newspapers and reports, its shabby furniture, and these seemed to have become incongruous, out of figure in the chair facing me keeping with the thoughtful figure in the chair facing me. "You had a college education, Mr. Paret," he remarked at length. "Yes." "Life's a queer thing. Now if I'd had a college education, like you, and you'd been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I'd be livin' up there on Grant Avenue and you'd be down here over the saloon." "Maybe," I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply a similarity in our gifts. But his manner remained impassive, speculative. "Ever read Carlyle's 'French Revolution'?" he asked suddenly. "Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago." "When you was in college?" "Yes." "I've got a little library here," he said, getting up and raising the shades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped my attention. He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf. "Wouldn't think I cared for such things, would you?" he demanded as he handed it to me. "Well, you never can tell what a man's real tastes are until you know him," I observed, to conceal my surprise.