"You talk as if you had been crossed in love," she consoled him.
"That's because I'm in pain," confessed Blackie. "It hasn't been an hour since I saw a thousand dollars in real money, and the telegraph company jerked it away from me just as I reached out to bring it home."
"Is there that much money in the world?" inquired Wallingford.
"Not loose," replied Blackie. "I thought I had this lump pried off, but now it's got a double padlock on it and to-night it starts far, far back to that dear old metropolis of the Big Thick Water, where the windy river looks like a fresh-plowed field. But they've coin out there, and every time I think of Mr. James Clover and his thousand I'm tempted to go down to his two-dollar hotel and coax him up a dark alley."
"Who does Mr. Clover do?" inquired Wallingford perfunctorily.
Blackie's sense of humor came uppermost to soothe his anguished feelings.
"He's the Supreme Exalted Ruler of the Noble Order of Friendly Hands," he grinned, "and his twenty-six members at three or eleven cents a month don't turn in the money fast enough; so he took a chance on the cold-iron cage and brought a chunk of the insurance reserve fund to New York to double it. I picked myself out to do the doubling for him."
Mr. Wallingford chuckled.
"I know," he said. "To double it you fold the bills when you put them in your pocket, and when Clover wanted it back you'd have him pinched for a common thief. But how did it get away? I'm disappointed in you, Blackie. I thought when you once saw soft money it was yours."
"Man died in his town. If he'd only put it off for one day the whole burg could have turned into a morgue, for I don't need it. But no! The man died, and the Supreme Exalted Secretary wired the Supreme Exalted Ruler. The telegram was brought to his room just when I had the hook to his gills, and he—went—down—stream! It was perfectly scandalous the names we called that man for having died, but it takes a long time to cuss a thousand dollars' worth."