"All right. We will; don't worry. We'll be trouble enough.--Nice people," said Hartley, as he shut the door of their room and sat down. "But the girl _ain't_ what I call pretty." By the time the dinner bell rang they were feeling at home in their new quarters. At the table they met the other boarders: the Brann brothers, newsdealers; old man Troutt, who kept the livery stable (and smelled of it); and a small, dark, and wizened woman who kept the millinery store. The others, who came in late, were clerks. Maud served the dinner, while Stella and her mother waited upon the table. Albert was accustomed to this, and made little account of the service. He did notice the hands of the girl, however, so white and graceful; no amount of work could quite remove their essential shapeliness. Hartley struck up a conversation with the newsdealers and left Bert free to observe Maud. She was not more than twenty, he decided, but she looked older, so careworn and sad was her face. "They's one thing ag'in' yeh," Troutt, the liveryman, was bawling to Hartley: "they's jest been worked one o' the goldingedest schemes you _ever_ see! 'Bout six munce ago s'm' fellers come all through here claimin' t' be after information about the county and the leadin' citizens; wanted t' write a history, an' wanted all the pitchers of the leading men, old settlers, an' so on. You paid ten dollars, an' you had a book an' your pitcher in it." "I know the scheme," grinned Hartley. "Wal, sir, I s'pose them fellers roped in every man in this town. I don't s'pose they got out with a cent less'n one thousand dollars. An' when the book come--wal!" Here he stopped to roar. "I don't s'pose you ever see a madder lot o' men in your life. In the first place, they got the names and the pitchers mixed so that I was Judge Ricker, an' Judge Ricker was ol' man Daggett. Didn't the judge swear--oh, it was awful!" "I should say so." "An' the pitchers that wa'n't mixed was so goldinged _black_ you couldn't tell 'em from niggers. You know how kind o' lily-livered Lawyer Ransom is? Wal, he looked like ol' black Joe; he was the maddest man of the hull b'ilin'. He throwed the book in the fire, and tromped around like a blind bull." "It wasn't a success, I take it, then. Why, I should 'a' thought they'd 'a' nabbed the fellows." "Not much! They was too keen for that. They didn't deliver the books theirselves; they hired Dick Bascom to do it f'r them. Course Dick wa'n't t' blame." "No; I never tried it before," Albert was saying to Maud, at their end of the table. "Hartley offered me a good thing to come, and as I needed money, I came. I don't know what he's going to do with me, now I'm here." Albert did not go out after dinner with Hartley; it was too cold. Hartley let nothing stand in the way of business, however. He had been at school with Albert during his first year, but had gone back to work in preference to study.