Dressed as on the great occasion when he visited Miss Jarney, Eli Jerey called at the home of Peter Dieman but a short ten minutes after Jacob Cobb had left in such a bad temper. Peter was in his jolliest frame of mind, and was still having jerks of felicitation over his fine stroke in besting Jacob Cobb, as he looked at it, when Eli floated into his presence like a fluted lamppost with its light extinguished. Eli sat down with his high hat on the top of his untutored head, as his only hat rack, when Peter took up the thread of the subject about where he and Jacob broke it in their slight misunderstanding. "When I told him to skip out, Eli, he flew the handle to beat all," said Peter. "He threatened, if he ever returned, to cook a dish for me that I would not relish." "Did he, though?" said Eli, raising his eyes to the level of Peter's. "Now what kind of a dish could he cook for you, do you suppose?" "I suppose he refers to the street paving proposition," responded Peter. "Which one? Where the wooden blocks were used?" "I suppose so." "Well, Mr. Dieman, we might as well be honest now and say the truth sometimes; but that was a very bad piece of jobbery for all connected with it--even for the wood blocks, as you will see when a year has passed." "How?" "In it, the city got its worst job, the contractors worser jobbed, the grafters got jobbed good and plenty, and the wood blocks will be so jobbed that you will not be able to find any in another turn of the sun around the seasons." "But how will he connect me with it?" "He can't, Peter; he can't. I can swear that none of the money came to you by the way of our office. It all went through Cobb's hands, and I have the receipts." "Bully, boy! Bully for you! When I die, I will leave you the old shop and all it holds. You have a slick head, Eli, for such things. Who'd thought Jacob would have given his receipt?" "I forced it out of him. Told him: no receipt, no money." "I knew you'd fix it all right when I left it all to you. Why, boy, you don't blame me for having confidence in you?--But Jim Dalls?" "Oh, he's to keep you out, as agreed, and is to go free on making his confession, and sticking to it at the trial. I tell you, he'll fix a lot of them high-ups and others who've been in the game so long they can't believe but what they're honest and upright citizens." "Bully! Then all danger for me is over?" asked Peter, chuckling in such a whimsical manner that Eli felt moved himself to get up and hammer him on the back for fear he was choking on his good humor. "Over," returned Eli, decisively. "Good! Say Eli, I was only running a bluff on Cobb at first, when I said they couldn't get me--I hear Monroe's dead?" "Deader'n a fried oyster since he jumped into the Hudson." "Poor Monroe, I always thought he would hang himself, if given enough rope."