Yet this was no longer the office of Eddring, claim agent of the railway. There had been change. Eddring, agent of claims, was in business for himself, and upon the other side of the pretty game of cross purposes. That which he had taken for calamity had proved good fortune. The world had loved him, even as it tried him. The advice of his old mother he had discovered to be almost prophetic. At last he found himself making use of that legal profession which had formerly been but one of the adjuncts of his earlier occupation. He had opened office for himself, and now paid service to no man. Eddring had made it his especial care, from the beginning of this work, to undertake that less esteemed branch of the law which has to do with the collection of claims, and, naturally or by choice, he found himself concerned more commonly with the claims of the weak against the strong. Collection law is little esteemed as against the better paid and vaster practice of the corporation law; yet Eddring had succeeded. To his own surprise, and that of others, he began to find his humble way of life pleasant and desirable. His business had widened rapidly, and, to his own wonder, now began to offer him a view into wide avenues of employment. Occupied not only with many minor matters, but with more considerable prosecutions, John Eddring, agent of claims, was possessor of a business yielding him four-fold the yearly value of his former salary on the Y.V. road. As to the latter, it had promptly withdrawn charges which presently it found impossible to prove. The head men of the railway were keen enough, after all. They studied the growing list of judgments collected against the road throughout the Delta country, but they could find no trace of John Eddring behind these claims. No system of detectives, no hired espionage could belie the truth. Finally convinced, they did the unusual and somewhat handsome thing of writing their former claim agent a full letter of apology and of asking his return to his late employment, at a salary precisely double that which he had resigned. Eddring had replied to this that, though agent of claims, he could not find it in his heart to serve as a corporation claim agent. So, he had labored on, prosperous to a just extent, and happy as only that man can be who finds work which gives him delight in the doing, and which offers a future built upon the honest accomplishment of the present. On this morning Eddring, humming contentedly as he went about his work at the humble desk before him, heard a knock and a shuffling tread which by instinct he knew belonged to some member of the colored race. "Come in," said he, without looking up. "Good mawnin', Mas' Edd'ern," said the newcomer. "Oh, it's you, is it, Jack?" said Eddring. "Well, come in."