clerk and half familiar spirit--Mr. Joseph Pelman, to wit; who appeared
perpetually on the point of choking himself by suppressed chucklings at
his principal's cleverness and the simplicity of dupes.

"Well, Joe?"

"Two to see you, sir," said Joe, his face lit up with sprightly malice.
"On the same lay. That Watkins farm of yours. I got it out of 'em. Ho ho!
I kept 'em in different rooms. I hunted up their records in your record
books. Doomsday Books, I call 'em. Ho ho!"

Mr. Mitchell selected a cigar, lit it, puffed it, and fixed his eye on
his demon clerk.

"Now then," he said sharply, "let's have it!"

The demon pounced on a Brobdingnagian volume upon the desk and worried it
open at a marker. It had been meant for a ledger, that huge volume; the
gray cloth covers bore the legend "N to Z." Ledger it was, of a grim
sort, with sinister entries of forgotten sins, the itemized strength or
weakness of a thousand men. The confidential clerk ran a long,
confidential finger along the spidery copperplate index of the W's:
"Wakelin, Walcott, Walker, Wallace, Walsh, Walters; Earl, John, Peter,
Ray, Rex, Roy--Samuel--page 1124." His nimble hands flew at the pages
like a dog at a woodchuck hole.

"Here't is--'Walters, Samuel: born '69, son of John Walters, Holland
Hill; religion--politics--um-um--bad habits, none; two years Vesper
Academy; three years Dennison shoe factories; married 1896--one child, b.
1899. Bought Travis Farm 1898, paying half down; paid balance out in five