"Just a month," said Mr. Gallop. "It must look awful little to you, after all the big cities you been used to." Mr. Opp lengthened his stride. "Yes," he said largely; "quite small, quite little, in fact. No place for a business man; but for a professional man, a man that requires leisure to sort of cultivate his brain and that means to be a influence in the community, it's a good place, a remarkably good place." A hint, however vague, dropped into the mind of Mr. Gallop, caused instant fermentation. From long experience he had become an adept at extracting information from all who crossed his path. A preliminary interest, a breath or two of flattery by way of anesthetic, and his victim's secret was out before he knew it. "Reckon you are going up to talk insurance to Mrs. Gusty," he ventured tentatively. "No; oh, no," said Mr. Opp. "I formerly was in the insurance business, some time back. Very little prospects in it for a man of my nature. I have to have a chance to sorter spread out, you know--to use my own particular ideas about working things out." "What is your especial line?" asked Mr. Gallop, deferentially. "Shoe--" Mr. Opp began involuntarily, then checked himself--"journalism," he said, and the word seemed for the moment completely to fill space. At Mrs. Gusty's gate Mr. Gallop stopped. "I guess I ought to go back now," he said regretfully; "the telephone and telegraph office is right there in my room, and I never leave them day or night except just this one hour in the afternoon. It's awful trying. The farmers begin calling each other up at three o'clock in the morning. Say, I wish you'd step in sometime. I'd just love to have you. But you are so busy and got so many friends, you won't have much time for me, I guess." Mr. Opp thought otherwise. He said that no matter how pressed he was by various important duties, he was never too busy to see a friend. And he said it with the air of one who confers a favor, and Mr. Gallop received it as one who receives a favor, and they shook hands warmly and parted. VI Mr. Opp, absorbed in the great scheme which was taking definite form in his mind, did not discover until he reached the steps that some one was lying in a hammock on the porch. It was a dark-haired girl in a pink dress, with a pink bow in her hair and small bows on the toes of her high-heeled slippers--the very kind of person, in fact, that Mr. Opp was most desirous of avoiding. Fortunately she was asleep, and Mr. Opp, after listening in vain at the door for sounds of Mrs. Gusty within, tiptoed cautiously to the other end of the porch and took his seat on a straight-backed settee.