apiece that's coming to us, John, ain't that correct?" He looked into the doctor's face eagerly; momentarily it seemed as if the gravity of the scene were about to evaporate in a cheap burlesque. In the variegated patchwork of Steven's mental processes, theories about the superfluousness of money, and laboured calculations as to how much was coming to him found an equal place, and were matched side by side with no sense of incongruity. "Yes, that's perfectly correct, Steven," said the doctor, somewhat illuminated. Steven eyed Gwynne vindictively. "I guess I can figger all right if I ain't a pin-head----" "Nobody's saying your figures aren't right," said Gwynne, with a weary patience. "The colonel owes the estate that much, and if you'll let things alone, it'll be paid." "Oh, yes, it'll be paid. I'll make it my business to _see_ that it's paid," said Steven, nodding. He turned to the doctor, confident of his support. "Ain't I right, John? Gwynne there won't do anything--won't lift his hand--just lets the rent keep on piling up and piling up. Calls himself a _lawyer_, and won't do _anything_--I've written him time and time again authorising him to--to sue--to sue for our rent--haven't I, Gwynne? Did I, or did I not write you, answer me that?" "Oh, yes, you wrote me," said Gwynne drily. "There, you see, you _see_, John," said Steven despairingly. "That's the way he acts--just that indifferent and shilly-shally. It's seven dollars and a half a month we ought each one to have been getting all this time--seven dollars and a half," his voice cracked again--"we haven't had a cent--not a _cent_, for over a year, and he won't _do_ anything! He ought to sue, oughtn't he, John?" "Why, Lord bless me, Steven, _I_ don't know," said the doctor, at once relieved yet remotely disquieted to learn the cause of the trouble, worried over Steven, and slightly amused at this seven-dollar-a-month melodrama. "I'm not a lawyer, you know. I suppose there's some way of getting at tenants that won't pay their rent--some way other than evicting 'em bodily, I mean--you'd hardly like to do that, you know, to people like the Pallinders----" "Don't see why not," said Steven, seizing upon this new idea with a very disconcerting readiness. "_I'd_ bring 'em to time, if _I_ had the doing of it." He directed a vindictive glance at Gwynne. "'Pay or quit,' that's what I'd say----" "Oh, come now, Steven, you wouldn't want to see the Pallinders' bureaus and bedsteads out on the sidewalk. It would be a kind of discredit to the property--_your_ property--Governor Gwynne's house," said the doctor, struggling with an inconvenient tendency to laugh, yet diplomatically approaching Steven on his most vulnerable side. "You wouldn't treat Mrs. Pallinder that way--she's a very polished lady--I've heard you say so a dozen times myself."