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“Hello, isn’t it daylight yet?” asked Mr. Brockelsby. The hot cakes that had but lately been applied to his shaven crown, seemed to have dispelled the fogs of intoxication and he was master of himself.

“It is twelve o’clock,” said Mr. Middleton.

“Twelve! Why, it was three when I left the banquet table. Twelve!”

“Twelve,” said Mr. Middleton, pointing gravely to the clock on the desk.

“It–is–twelve. Don’t tell me it is the day after.”

“I am compelled to do so. You were at the banquet of the Sons of Andrew Jackson’s Wars, twenty-four hours ago.”

“Great Scott!” exclaimed Mr. Brockelsby, thrusting his hands through his hair, or rather making the motion of doing so. “Great Scott!” he repeated, “I am bald-headed. What the devil have I been into? Where the devil have I been?”

“I found you here this morning. Your wife has been here.”

“Oh, lord! Oh, lord! What did she say when she saw me dead to the world–and bald-headed?”

“She did not see you. I had concealed you.”

“Good boy, good boy.”

“She offered me two hundred dollars reward to bring you home,” and Mr. Middleton related all that Mrs. Brockelsby had said.

“It would be all off when she saw me bald-headed. What the devil wouldn’t she suspect? I don’t know. I would say I didn’t know where I had been. That would certainly sound fishy. It would sound like a preposterous excuse to cover up something pretty questionable. People don’t go out in good society and get their heads shaved. She’s pretty independent and uppish now. She said the next time she knew of me cutting up any didoes, she would get a divorce. She comes into two hundred thousand from her grandfather’s estate in six months and she’s pretty independent. Say, my boy, can’t you take a check for the money she wants? She’s going to Washington to-morrow. Tell her I went out of town and sent the money. I will go out of town. But the boys will see my bald head. Where do you suppose I was? What sort of crowd was I with? I must have a wig. You must get it for me. The boys would josh me to death, and if the story got to my wife it would be all off. I’ll go to Battle Creek and get a new lot of hair started.”

Mr. Middleton sat down and wrote busily for a moment. He handed a sheet of paper to Mr. Brockelsby.

“What’s this? You resign? You’re not going to help me out?”

“I am no longer in your employ. I will undertake to do all you ask of me for a proper compensation, say one hundred and fifty a day for two days.”

“What?” screamed Mr. Brockelsby. “This is robbery, extortion, blackmail.”

“It is what you often charge yourself. Very well. Get your own wig and be seen on the streets going after it. Leave your wife to wonder why I do not come to report what progress is made in the search for you and to start a rigorous investigation herself. I am under no obligations not to ease her worry, to calm her disturbed mind by telling her I have found you. She’ll be hot foot after you then.”

“She’d spot the wig at once. It would fool others, but not her. She’d see I had been jagged. You’ve got me foul. I’ll have to accede to your terms. You’ll not give me away?”

“Sir, I would not, in this, my first employment as an independent attorney, be so derelict to professional honor, as to betray the secrets of my client. We have chosen to call this three hundred dollars–a check for which you will give me in advance–payment for the services I am about to perform. In reality, I consider it only part of what you owe for the miserably underpaid services of the past three years.”

As Mr. Middleton wended his way homeward, it was with some melancholy that he recalled how, on previous occasions when good fortune had added to his stock of wealth, he had rejoiced in it because he saw his dreams of marriage with the young lady of Englewood approaching realization more and more. But now they had drifted apart. Not once had he seen her since that fatal night. On several evenings he had made the journey to Englewood and walked up and down before her house, but not so much as her shadow on the curtain had he seen. Let her make the first move toward a reconciliation. If she expected him to do so after her treatment of him, she was sadly mistaken.