“Lord! you might as well say our two per cent. Chinese population is typical Americans. First time I ever was in New York overnight I walked from Ninetieth Street down to Fourteenth, at about one in the morning, taking in a few side streets on the way. I didn’t meet on an average of two people to the block, and every light was out in nineteen houses out of twenty. Down along part of Broadway I saw a few tired, frowsy-looking folks in big restaurants, and a few drunks and a girl or two, and some half a dozen cabs prowling about. That was ‘gay New York by night. Hilarious and reeskay attractions furnished by typical New Yorkers!’ Whenever I hear that chestnut about ‘typical New Yorkers,’ I think of old Baldy Durling up in Campgaw, who was sixty years old when he went to his first circus. He stood half an hour in front of the dromedary’s stall, taking in all its queer bumps and funny curves, and then he looks around, kind of defiant at the crowd, and yells out: ‘Hell! There _ain’t_ no such animal!’” A polite smile from the dry lips, which Gerald of late was forever moistening, was the only reply to this harangue. Caleb gave up trying to draw the youth into an argument, and adopted a more business-like tone. “I want you should run down to Ballston for me soon’s you’ve voted to-morrow, Jerry. Better take the 7.15 train. I want you to go to the office of the Ballston _Herald_, and give a note from me to Bruce Lanier, one of the editors. He’ll hand you a package. Nothing that amounts to much, but I’ve paid a big price for it, so I don’t want it lost. Take good care of it, and bring it back on the two o’clock train. Get all the sleep you can to-night. You’re liable to have a wakeful day.” “All right.” “The package Lanier’s to give you is just a bunch of letters about a railroad deal. Nothing you’d understand. They’re to be ready for me any time after noon to-morrow.” “I thought you wanted me to work at the polls for you.” “Anybody that knows how to lie can work at the polls. There’s nobody but you I can send for those letters. All the other men I can trust can’t be spared to-morrow.” “Bruce Lanier,” repeated Gerald idly. “Any relation to Miss——” “Only a relation by marriage. He’s her brother.” “Nice sort of girl, always seemed to me. What’d she leave you for?” “She left of her own accord.” “So you told me. But why?” “Because she got a crazy idea that I was the original Unpardonable Sinner. And having made up her mind to it, she natcher’lly didn’t want her opinions shaken by any remarks for the defence. So she left.” Gerald did not pursue the subject. He seldom, indeed, dwelt so long, nowadays, on any one theme of talk. He moistened his dry lips once more, sucked at his cigarette and slouched along in silence. His father asked several questions that bore on the impending election, and was answered in monosyllables. The cigarette burned down to its cork tip, and Gerald lighted another at its smouldering stump.