“Grand place you have here, Simmons,” Dr. Vessinger observed. “The top of a hill not too high,--that’s the right place for a country house.” “If Olaf were only here oftener,” the wife remarked. “He’s just come home, and he says he must leave soon again.” “Yes, those Jews I work for, the Techheimer Brothers, mean that I shall earn my salary. They are dickering for some new mines in Mexico, and want me to look them over.” “But you are promised to me for the tenth,” Mrs. Bellflower protested. “What are the Techheimers to that?” commented the doctor. “Nothing! I shall put them off until the eleventh,” Simmons responded heartily. “It’s going to be a fierce jaunt, and I am not keen to start.” “Take us! We would all go, wouldn’t we, Mrs. Simmons?” the younger woman put in. “I am afraid the hotels wouldn’t please you down there. And queer things happen sometimes. The last time I was there--it was ticklish. I never wanted to go back. You wouldn’t have liked it, not you women.” “Tell it! Tell us!” they chorused. Vessinger lit a cigarette and resigned himself to watching the assembling clouds. Imperceptibly he drew away from the group, as if declining to be one where he was not first. “I _adore_ adventures!” the Magnificent Wreck added sentimentally, encouragingly. Simmons folded his arms across his breast. His eyes flashed pleasantly. The story interested him, too:-- “Well, it was in ’91, for the Techheimer Brothers. One of the first jobs I did for them. They wired me from St. Louis that a certain old Don from whom I had bought several car-loads of ore, which had been forwarded to their smelter, had done us very prettily. He had salted his cars very cleverly. The ore ran short of the assay by several thousand dollars, all told. I had made the assay--you understand? “It was my duty to take the three days’ journey from the City of Mexico to Don Herara’s headquarters in the little town of Los Puertos, see the old rascal, and without having a quarrel, induce him to refund the money he had cheated us out of. “Los Puertos is almost the loneliest spot I ever got into, for a town. It is at the end of a two days’ stage-ride from the railroad. It is hell! Just peons, a great adobe barracks where my old thief lived, a swift river rushing down from the mountains behind the town--nothing more. “You should have seen us the afternoon of my arrival, sitting in the old Don’s office, drinking _petits verres_ and swapping compliments. ‘Your honorable excellency,’ said I; ‘Your noble courtesy,’ said he. And so on. The Don had white hair, a hawk nose, brown eyes, that had slunk deep under his brows, and the long white beard of a patriarch. He was a most respectable sinner!