"By that time I'll have enough soft money in front of me to ease my fall," announced Wallingford confidently. "I'm for that get-rich-quick game, and you can just bank on me as a winner." "You'll win all right," agreed Blackie confidently, looking at his watch, "but you're like the rest of us. You'll have to die real sudden if you want to leave anything to your widow. That's the trouble with this quick money. It's lively or you wouldn't catch it on the wing, and it stays so lively after you get it." He arose as he concluded this sage observation and buttoned his coat. "But you're going to stay to dinner with us?" insisted Mrs. Wallingford. "No," he returned regretfully. "I'd like to, but business is business. I have an engagement to trim a deacon in Podunk this evening. Give my regards to the Prince of Monaco." It was scarcely more than a week afterwards when he somberly turned in at the bar room of that same hotel, and almost bumped into Wallingford, who was as somberly coming out. For a moment they gazed at each other in amazement and then both laughed. "You must have gone over and back by wireless," observed Blackie. "What turned up?" "Stung!" exclaimed J. Rufus with deep self-scorn. "I got an inside tip on some copper stock the evening you left, and the next morning I looked up a broker and he broke me. He had just started up in the bucket-shop business and I was his first customer. He didn't wait for any more. That's all." Daw laughed happily, and he was still laughing when they entered the drawing room of Wallingford's suite. "It's the one gaudy bet that the biggest suckers of all are the wise people," he observed. "Here you go out West and trim a bunch of come-ons for twenty-five thousand, and what do you do next? Oh, just tarry here long enough to tuck that neat little bundle into the pocket of a bucket-shop broker that throws away the bucket! You'd think he was the wise boy, after that, but he'll drop your twenty-five thousand on a wire-tapping game, and the wire tapper will buy gold bricks with it. The gold-brick man will give it to the bookies and the bookies will lose it on stud poker. I'm a Billy goat myself. I clean up ten thousand last week on mining stock that permits Mr. Easy Mark to mine if he wants to, and I pay it right over last night for the fun of watching a faro expert deal from a sanded deck! Me? Cleaned with-_out_ soap!" "You don't mean to say you're broke, too?" demanded his host. "If I had any less they'd arrest me for loitering." Mr. Wallingford glowered upon his twenty-dollar-a-day apartments with a sigh. The latest in heavy lace curtains fluttered at him from the windows, thick rugs yielded to his feet, all the frippery of Louis-Quinze, while it mocked his bigness, ministered to his comfort--but waited to be paid for! "You don't look as good to me as you did a while ago," he declared. "I'd figured on you for a sure touch, for now it's back to the Rube patch for us. O Fanny!"