vious to the opportunity to join the moneyed classes or oblige the politicians. "I kin go. Set up on Sansom Street. Got my eye on a place now. Let 'em have it at their own price. I'm young 'nough to set up ag'in. I'm only risin' seventy. But what about old Raybun? He 's-why, Lord! he must be a hunderd. He was seventy when he come, so he said, an' he 's been there a'most thirty year'. Near a hunderd, by heck! Say, you got to do somethin' fer old Raybun."

Rank suddenly became anxious in a fashion he had not been for himself.

"Raybun?" questioned the lawyer. "Lives in the loft," replied Rank, nodding.

"Lives," shouted the lawyer, losing sight of the great fee in the prospect of a great fight-"lives, did you say? Eats and sleeps? Washes?"

"Fer thirty year'," said Rank.
"His home?"

"Everything."

"You can stay there in spite of the city

of Philadelphia, the

State of Pennsyl

vania, and the United States of America all together!" cried the lawyer. "Go home. Law in Pennsylvania has been changed to politics, and there is n't any justice at all; but they ain't got around to the doctrine that a man's house is his castle as yet. The

gang 'll get there

The legal person merely mentioned that Rank was the owner of the blacksmith shop objurgated by the newspapers.

II. THE REAL BEGINNING OF THE STORY

HOWEVER that was only yesterday, and my story begins on a sunny morning in 1883.

Rank looked up from the horseshoe he had just fitted, to find an old man stroking a patriarchal beard and looking down at him.

"Well, old man-Moses in the Bulrushes," laughed Rank, "how 'll you be shod? Have steel calks?"

"Fine job!" said the patriarch. Now he took an old hat off a head of long white hair.

"Quit your kiddin'," said Rank, "and tell me what you want, Old Bulrushes. Honest, you look like Moses!"

"What's the rent?" asked the old man, pointing above, toward the loft.

"Oh, that sign 's been up there twenty year'," said Rank. "No one likes the smell of the hosses nor the smoke nor the hammerin' nor me. What 'll you give?"

some day; but not in your time. Then a man's house 'll be the boss's office. Unless he buys a judge or two, an' they come high. The gang keeps the price up. But for the present go home. You 're safe. You can die there. Five hundred dollars. I'll send the bill."

That night Solomon Rank fell upon Abraham Raybun as he sat at his supper in the loft, and swore that he had saved them both. He said nothing of the five hundred dollars. That he thought would be difficult. But he was surprised at the case of it when, by the help of the lawyer, he went to negotiate a promissory note.

"Well, I dunno," said the stranger. "I never lived in no city 'fore. Down in Ma'yland, where I use' to live, I reckon it 'u'd be wo'th 'bout a dollar a month."

"Not on your life!" said Rank. "Nothin' in it. Pace away, old man. Not 'nough to watch you from stealin' the wash-boards. There 's the door; here 's my foot-git!"

But the old man did not go. He smiled. He liked Rank and his ways.

"Well, what 'd you say to a dollar a week, then?"

Rank looked up from his work, seeing first that the foot he had shod stood fair and flat on the earthen floor of his shop. The stranger had taken off his coat. His smile was pleasant. It was a warm day. "How old are you?" irrelevantly asked Rank.

Rank slowly took a key off his ring and passed it over.

"Don't yo' want no writin'?"

"Not a write," said the blacksmith. "If you don't behave, you git fired. If you do, you live there forever. My word 's better 'n your bond."

"Look here now," said the lessee, haltingly, "I don't want to cheat you. You ain't got nothin' in advance. Seems cheap for this locality. Near business. I don't know nothin' 'bout city real estate."

"Well, if you can't pay me a dollar a week," said the blacksmith, grinning, "make it ten."

"You 're a very pleasant blacksmith," replied the old man, holding out his hand. "Better know my name. Raybun-Abraham Raybun o' Ma'yland, suh."

"Mine 's Rank-Solomon Rank o' Philadelphy, suh. Got it? Sure you can stand the hosses-"

"I was raised with hosses," the old man replied.

"And the smoke?"

"We had n't nothin' but fireplaces in Ma'yland," said Raybun. "And the racket?"

Raybun nodded.
"And me?"

Raybun laughed happily.

"Good luck! Depart in peace, Moses!" Rank waved Raybun away.

A few minutes later Raybun stood in the middle of the loft and looked about. His old blue eyes glowed.

"Home!" he murmured.

"Home!"

For there was a space of at least ten feet by ten where he could stand upright, with no end of storage-room under the slopes of the roof. Besides, there was a tremendous, rude dormer on the south side.

He looked carefully at his worn silver watch, and then at the sun, and said:

"Yes, Mason and Dixon's Line is this way." He sniffed with joy the aroma of some new cedar shingles with which the

roof had recently been patched, and said again: "Home!" Later he exclaimed: "Peaceful! Very peaceful!"

III. CONCERNING THE GREATS

FOR Some days after this Rank saw strange things going into the loft, mostly on the back of Raybun.

There were slabs of black wood, some of it so knotty that the blacksmith could see no use for it outside of the fire. Then there were pots and pans of paints and fillers and varnishes and stains and glues, followed by costly ormolu escutcheons and moldings, which the unlearned blacksmith knew no better than to call brass; pretty brass-headed tacks, glass and brass casters, knobs and handles, and many strange tools, the like of which even the blacksmith, used to tools of a certain iron kind, had never seen. There were giant wooden jack-planes, smaller, but still heavy, smoothing-planes, to the last stubby, coffin-shaped "finisher." Saws, moldingplanes, bits and chisels for "fancy" work followed, and finally a turning-lathe.

Rank stood in the midst of it all, and admiringly asked:

"Sa-ay, what you a-go'n' to do?" Raybun, with his coat off, happy, and looking twenty years younger, said:

"Down in Ma'yland, 'fo' the wah, my father was a chai'- and cabinet-maker. But when we boys-Dan an' me-got back after Appomattox, he and mother was dead, and the business left to us. Well, they was a few people wanted chai's, but none did n't want no cabinetwork. They jus' wanted to keep on livin' ef they could git food 'nough. Then you 'member how machinery come in and made everything. Could make ten chai's for what I could make one. So we sold what was left of the place an' divided up. Then Dan went wrong, an' it took most of my little share to keep him out of jail. I ain't right sure he 's goin' straight now. Always mo'o' less in jail. Dan 's young yit-not mo' 'n sixty. Got to be 'scused, I reckon, fo' a little wildness."

"Still a-sowin' oats, is he?" asked the smith.

"Well, about that there," nodded old Raybun, seriously. "He's a promoter, an' they tells me that 's where promoters spend a good deal of their time-in jail.

Cross at me fo' lecturin' him. Jail don' seem no right place fo' er soldier an' gentleman from Ma'yland."

"What jail does he live at just now?" asked the grinning blacksmith.

"Oh, I don' expect he 's in jail. Ain't there always. Fack is, I dunno where he is. An' I won' fin' out tell-"

"He gits hung up ag'in?" asked the shrewd smith.

Raybun nodded.

"Happens every now an' then, suh. No use to lie." Then he resumed his narrative: "So 's they wa'n't no money in the South, I come no'th with what was leftand bought these here things."

But Raybun ended with something on his mind. That was evident.

"All right fur as it goes," said the blacksmith; "but what 's the rest?"

"Well, suh," said the cabinet-maker, "they is somethin' else."

"Go on," urged the blacksmith. "What was you 'fore you come up here? A burglar or a murderer? Mebby jail 's a fam'ly complaint."

"Oh, nothin' like that-nothin' bad," said Raybun. "You'll think it foolish, that 's all."

"Oh," said the smith. "In love?" "No."

"Debts?" "No."

"Whisky?" "No."

"Then what is it?" asked the smith, impatiently. "What else is they?"

"I hate to tell; but it 's the greats."
"Greats?"

The blacksmith took a slab of black walnut from the rack and threatened Raybun.

"Now you go on! If you ought to be in jail, I won't keep you from it."

"Fack is," said old Raybun, diffidently, "ever sence I was six I been crazy to have 'great' attached to my name-"

The blacksmith burst into laughter. "Yes, it's funny," said Raybun. "When I went to school an' read 'bout that there Alexander the Great an' Peter the Great an' all them other greats, I says to Tim Barlow, says I, 'I 'm a-go'n' to be a great myself.'

"A great lunkhead!' says Tim.” Raybun paused to laugh, and the smith

cried: