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wonderful young woman, and I hope she's going to be my very dear friend."

I did not wait for Mr. Curtis to speak; I just went on. I could see he was beginning to look at me with a sort of wonder.

"I just saw you and Mr. Curtis talking, and I saw him say to you that with some of the money he had just been making he would like to set some fellow, who wasn't quite a bad one, on his legs, and give some woman, who was very much in need of it, happiness. Well, I know just such a pair, and if he meant it I can give him a chance of doing, right now, exactly what he said he wanted to do."

They looked at me, and they looked at each other, which I did not wonder at—I was so hot and eager, so very much in earnest. With that girl sitting there, right m my line of vision, I felt that I had got to take these people's hearts by storm; and I was not going to stick at a trifle in doing it. Mr. Curtis asked, with something in his voice which made me wonder if he was quizzing me, but I did not care if he was:—

"Who are your deserving couple, Miss Lee?"

Then I told them all about it, in just as few words as I could, and as close to the point as I could get them. It did me good to see how quick he was at getting at my meaning. I had heard a deal about American quickness; I saw an example of it then. I believe that before I had finished he understood it all—just got at what I wanted him to get. The quizzical note was still in his voice when he made what, from an Englishman, would have seemed a simply amazing speech, but which seemed to come quite naturally from him.

"If fifty thousand dollars—that is, ten thousand pounds sterling—would do for this lady and gentleman what you want to do, you can have the cash to-night, on one condition, Miss Lee—that you don't say from whom it comes. You're to regard that as your secret and mine."

In about three minutes I went tearing off after Mr. Armitage. I found him sitting at