"N-no; times are good, and the market--our market, at least--is daily growing stronger. It is rather a matter of finances. I am an engineer, as my father was before me. When it comes to wrestling with the money devil, I'm outclassed from the start." "There are a good many more of us in the same boat," said Griswold, leaving an opening for further confidences if Raymer chose to make them. But the young ironmaster was looking at his watch, and the confidences were postponed. "I'm keeping you up, when I daresay you ought to be in bed," he protested; but Griswold held him long enough to ask for a suggestion in a small matter of his own. Now that he was able to be about, he was most anxious to relieve Miss Grierson and her father of the charge and care of one whose obligation to them was already more than mountain-high: did Raymer happen to know of some quiet household where the obligated one could find lodging and a simple table? Raymer, taking time to think of it, did know. Mrs. Holcomb, the widow of his father's bookkeeper, owned her own house in Shawnee Street. It was not a boarding-house. The widow rented rooms to two of Mr. Grierson's bank clerks, and she was looking for another desirable lodger. Quite possibly she would be willing to board the extra lodger. Raymer, himself, would go and see her about it. "It is an exceedingly kind-hearted community this home town of yours, Mr. Raymer," was the convalescent's leave-taking, when he shook hands with the ironmaster at the foot of the stairs; and that was the thought which he took to bed with him after Raymer had gone to make his adieux to the small person who, in Griswold's reckoning, owned the kindest of the kind hearts. XXI BROFFIN'S EQUATION Having Clerk Maurice's telegram to time the overtaking approach, Broffin found the _Belle Julie_ backing and filling for her berth at the Vicksburg landing when, after a hasty Vicksburg breakfast, he had himself driven to the river front. Going aboard as soon as the swing stage was lowered, he found Maurice, with whom he had something more than a speaking acquaintance, just turning out of his bunk in the texas. "I took it for granted you'd be along," was Maurice's greeting. "What bank robber are we running away with now?" Broffin grinned. "I'm still after the one you took on in the place of John Gavitt." "Humph!" said the clerk, sleepily; "I thought that one _was_ John Gavitt." "No; he merely took Gavitt's place and name. Tell me all you know about him." "I don't know anything about him, except that he was fool enough to pull Buck M'Grath out of the river just after M'Grath had tried to bump him over the bows." This was a new little side-light on the characteristics of the man who was wanted. Broffin pulled gently at the thread of narrative until he had all the particulars of the humane mutiny and the near-tragedy in which it had terminated.