Suddenly a little thought no bigger than a minute rose in one corner of his brain, and spread, and spread. He looked furtively at the clock over the clerk's head, and saw that it was only half-past two. With guilty deliberation he rose and walked slowly toward the door of the telephone booth, keeping back from full consciousness just what he was about to do. Then he slammed himself within, and shouted Casey's address to the operator. As he waited, his wrath mounted. 'What in heck was the matter with me anyway!' He smoked furiously in the stifling box.

'Go ahead,' said the operator,—and, at the word, 'Hey there, Casey,' he yelled at the dim voice on the wires, 'I've gotta have five thousand quick! Sell that Benningham Common—yes, Waldron's.' At the name his anger broke loose. 'The old high-brow tried to bluff me. What!!—' The connection failed and left him gasping.

'What! Sold it! He told you to!—No, I dunno anything about a court decision. Up 15 points on a merger! Well what do you think—' He gulped down the sudden reversal and felt for words. 'Say, tell him,—' he licked his lips,—'tell him I'm sure glad I saved him. I'm sure glad.'

The wires roared again,—and Cargan, putting down the receiver grinned shamefacedly into the dirty mirror. But gradually a sense of conscious virtue began to trickle pleasantly through his veins. 'I'm sure glad,' he repeated more vigorously; 'carryin' him to-day was what did it.' A vision of Mrs. Waldron's happy face rose to bless him; the exhilaration of the morning coursed back into his heart, with a comfortable feeling of good business about it. He felt better and better. From somewhere a saying floated into his head: 'Doing good unto others is the only happiness.' 'By heck, that's true,' he commented aloud, and sat smoking peacefully, his mind aglow with pleasant thoughts.

The bell whirred raucously. He saw that he had forgotten to replace the receiver, and putting it to his ear caught Casey's voice again:—

'Say, Carg, Jim Smith's in the office, and won't leave till he's heard from you. Montana Pacific's off two points more. Say, do you want to carry him? He says he's done for if you sell him out.'

A fire of indignation rushed through Cargan. 'What d' you think I am—a damned philanthropist?' he yelled. 'Sell out the old gambler! Sell him out!' And he hung up.

NOTHING
BY ZEPHINE HUMPHREY

THIS is not going to be an easy story to write. Its theme is precisely that which I have chosen for my title; and naturally its positive significance is not obvious. But I must somehow get the thing into words. The spiritual value which I found in the experience may come home to some reader. At any rate, it is good for us all to stop now and then and challenge the conventional standards of our lives.

To begin with, I presume that there are few sympathetic students of humanity who will not agree with me that the strain of mysticism which sometimes appears in the New England character is one of the most interesting and touching of all the manifestations of our human nature. It is so unexpected! The delicate pearl in the rough oyster is not more apparently incongruous, rarer, or more priceless. Nay, it is more than that. The development is so impossible as to be always a miracle, freshly wrought by the finger of God.