"The truth is," said the agent, "that the Cosmopolitan Railway Company, when they began, hired the barn and fitted it up for a paint-shop. They would leave their cars there to dry. But that was long ago. And no one has wanted to hire these premises till now. You don't happen to know a painter you could underlet the shop to?" No. Max knew no such painter. But he figured to himself better times, when they would fit up the paint-shop as a sort of summer music-room. And it was pleasant to know that they had something to let, if only any one wanted to hire. All the same, as he said to me when he began his confession, all his guilt, if it were guilt, all the crime, where there was crime, was "along of the paint-shop," as the reader, if he be patient, shall see. CHAPTER II. THE WOMAN BEGAN IT. "Did you ever notice," said Bertha, at tea one night, "that the rails still run into the paint-shop, just as when the railway people painted their cars there?" "Why, of course I have," said Max, surprised. "They took up the frog in the avenue, but the old rails were not worth taking." "I suppose so," said Bertha meekly. "I have been thinking," she said--"I have been wondering whether--don't you think we might--just while business is so dull, you know--have a car of our own?" "Have a car of our own!" screamed Max, dropping knife and fork this time. "What do we want of a car?" "We don't want it," said Bertha, "of course, unless other people want it." But then she went on to explain that, no matter how hard were the times, she observed that the street-cars were always full. People had to stand in them at night coming out from the theatre, although that did not seem right or fair. Bertha had measured the paint-shop, and had found that there was room enough in it not only for a car, but for two horses. The old loft of its early days, when it served for a stable, was left as it was made, big enough for a ton or two of hay. It had occurred to Bertha that, as Max had nothing else to do, he might buy two horses and a street-car, and earn a penny or two for Elaine's milk and oatmeal by running an opposition to the Cosmopolitan Company. Max loved Bertha, and he greatly respected her judgment. But he was human, and therefore he pooh-poohed her plan as absurd--really because it was hers. All the same, after supper he went out and looked at the paint-shop; and the next morning he climbed into the loft and measured it. Poor Max, he had little enough else to do. He sawed and split all the wood. He made the fire. He would fain have cooked the dinner and set the table, but Bertha would not let him. He had nothing else to do. Not a piano-forte hammer was there to cover between the Penobscot and the Pacific, and the panic seemed more frightened and more frightful than ever. So Max did not waste any valuable time, though he did spend an hour in the old hay-loft. And at dinner it was he who took up the subject.