This may justify a word of explanation. My father was a lineal descendant of Baron Harpending, who came to New York, New Amsterdam, with the original settlers from Holland. It was one of his ancestors who gave a lease for ninety-nine years to the Dutch Reformed Church of a piece of property in the business center of New York, now worth, approximately, three hundred million dollars. It was another Trinity Church case, with this exception, that there was no doubt about the lawful heirs when the lease terminated. My father brought suit to recover the property. That was one of the great lawsuits of the last century. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and Judge Underwood were my father’s counsel. He won the case in the lower courts, but was vanquished in the Supreme Court of the United States on a technicality by a four to three decision. The family lost the vast property, but the church still displays the Harpending arms, as required by the lease of my ancestor, executed nearly 175 years ago. My mother, on the other hand, was of the Clark family of Virginia, which settled in Kentucky over a hundred years ago. She was of the typical Southern strain. Thus, while my father, with his Northern antecedents, was an ardent supporter of the Union cause, I had the maternal blood in my veins. How we came to take opposite sides in the great civil struggle was an instance of plain heredity, nothing more. But that has nothing to do with this story. While I was worrying over finances, not knowing which way to turn and mighty downcast and blue-deviled, I was suddenly informed that my companion, Mr. Ridgley Greathouse, had been rearrested and was in custody. Ignorant of the charge and not having the wherewithal to fly, to say nothing of inclination, I determined to put on a bold front, walked down to the United States marshal’s office and asked him if he wanted me. The mental processes of that functionary were of a leisurely nature. He looked me over with great care, scratched his head with a pen in a meditative way, slew a distant fly with a well-directed squirt of tobacco juice and answered, weighing each word, “Well, not to-day, but I guess I will to-morrow. Where do you live?” I gave him the name of my hotel and the number of my room, which data being duly noted, we bade each other good-day. To tell the truth, I was badly rattled. Nothing seemed more certain than that I was doomed to incarceration on a new charge, and, having enjoyed the public hospitality for almost a year, I had no stomach for any more. [Illustration: THE AUTHOR’S MOTHER Mrs. A. Harpending Sr., an ardent Southern sympathizer]