"When Sam's gaze was free to wander about the room he found it choked full of old furniture of the oldest and most dilapidated kind--a mahogany sideboard with the knobs gone; sofas with the hair-cloth seats in holes, all good in their day, but all wanting the upholsterer and the cabinet-maker. Not a dollar had been spent upon them for years. The life interest, Sam found out afterward, went with the furniture as well as the house. "One thing struck Sam more than anything else, and that was Tim's tenderness over Miss Ann. When she coughed--and she coughed most of the time--Tim would start as if it hurt him. Once he went into the next room and brought her a shawl, and just before Sam left Tim poured out a spoonful of medicine for her and made her take it right before Sam, adding: "'It's only Sam; he's got a heart as big as an ox, and will understand. Won't you, Sam?' "Next day Collins started in to raise the money for his mining. Tim introduced him to the cashier and the president of the Exeter, and they both looked Sam over and took in his wide sombrero and queer clothes, and examined his samples--one was a beauty, which Tiffany offered him a big sum for--and then they wrote him a letter--that is, the president did--on the bank's paper, saying that they appreciated greatly the opportunity, etc., but the charter of the bank prevented, etc., and they had no money of their own, etc.--same old kind of a lying letter these men write when they can't get one hundred per cent. on an investment. "Tim nearly fell off his stool with disappointment when Sam read him the letter, but Sam never turned a hair. If the old fossils in the Exeter didn't have the money, somebody else would; and, sure enough, a dry-goods man and a retired physician turned up, and the two roped in a young millionnaire, a fellow by the name of Moulton, who thought he knew it all, and _did_. The money was raised, and Sam got ready to go back to Mexico and start the mine on an enlarged scale. All this time he had been looking up his old school-friends, and the night before he started he got them all together, including the new subscribers, the young millionnaire among them, and Sam, at the millionnaire's suggestion, called on old Solari, down in University Place, and arranged for a farewell dinner. Tim was to sit on his right hand and the retired physician on his left, and Sam was to make a proposition to his guests, half of whom were directors in the new company, the nature of which he kept secret even from Tim. "The old book-keeper begged off, and vowed he couldn't go--hadn't been to a dinner for years; Sister Ann wasn't well, and needed him; and, besides, on that very night he would be up late at his home making up the month's returns--all the excuses a man hunts up when he is hiding the real reason that keeps him away. But Sam understood Tim by this time.