Young Smith eyed him with a certain apprehension in his keen boyish face. "Oh, yes, the Turner Building is said to be one of the finest in the West; but I understand they are going to put up some in Chicago that'll beat us all hollow. Pallinder's a great friend of yours, isn't he, Doctor?" "We are neighbours, you know," said Doctor Vardaman, diplomatically, and smiled, meeting the other's eye. "Don't be uneasy. I haven't been investing." "Why--I--I----" Harvey stammered, crimsoning in his confusion, yet plainly a little relieved. "I just couldn't help wondering if you had, you know. The Colonel's a great old blatherskite, isn't he? Of course, I don't mean--that is, I mean----" "Harvey, Harvey," said Doctor Vardaman, wagging his head solemnly, "I'm afraid that's not the way counsel for the defence should open his remarks." "Well, it's _so_, you know, anyhow," said the young fellow ingenuously. "Jim sees a lot of them; he goes out there all the time. He's in that shindy they're going to give on the twelfth. Say, have you heard that about Gwynne Peters?" "No, what was it--Oh, here's my car--never mind, Harvey. I don't need any help." CHAPTER FIFTEEN Fate, who, as Doctor Vardaman's favourite classic assures us, calls, equal-footed, upon carpenters and kings, must surely have laid a directing hand on the old gentleman's shoulder that morning; not yet were his adventures over, even when he reached his own door. The Lexington and Amherst Street car crawled with him laboriously as far as the corner of Amherst and Richmond, where he must disembark and trudge the remaining five blocks of board sidewalk to number 201. The trolley whisks you out there in five minutes now. Not long ago I saw in somebody's back yard, a back yard of the proletariat, next door to a tenement, one of these dilapidated old horse-cars, pygmy ancestor of a race of giants, thrown aside, weather-worn, ancient as the palaeolithic period, serving as a play-house for the proletarian youngsters. The windows were all out of it, even the purple glass lights overhead; but you might dimly discern the legend: "No. 5. Lexington and Amherst. No. 5." along its battered sides. The thing was as romantic as a derelict galleon; sentimental melancholy possessed me as I looked at it; all my youth rode in that decrepit chariot, if not with comfort, at least with tolerable satisfaction. Will the rising generation treasure so picturesque a memory? I think not. In cold weather there was a layer of straw, doubtful-tinted, breathing strange odours, in the bottom of it, thoughtfully provided by the street-car company to protect its patrons' feet. It was lit by two oil lamps, in two niches, fortified by wire-work, one at either end of the car. These vehicles were banded about the body with a wide stripe in various colours to distinguish the various lines, an amazingly ingenious idea if people had only been able to see after dark, like cats; and, as the spectrum had been exhausted