slight--something a little "off." One glance of that kindly and humorous
eye told me such expectation had been nonsense. Odd he might have
been--Gadzooks! he looked it--but "queer"? Never. The fact that Miss
Apperthwaite could picture such a man as this "sitting and sitting and
sitting" himself into any form of mania or madness whatever spoke loudly
of her own imagination, indeed! The key to "Simpledoria" was to be
sought under some other mat.

... As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the "Despatch," and to
pick up acquaintances, here and there, about town, I sometimes made Mr.
Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. "Oh yes, I know Dave
BEASLEY!" would come the reply, nearly always with a chuckling sort of
laugh. I gathered that he had a name for "easy-going" which amounted to
eccentricity. It was said that what the ward-heelers and camp-followers
got out of him in campaign times made the political managers cry. He was
the first and readiest prey for every fraud and swindler that came to
Wainwright, I heard, and yet, in spite of this and of his hatred of
"speech-making" ("He's as silent as Grant!" said one informant), he had
a large practice, and was one of the most successful lawyers in the
state.

One story they told of him (or, as they were more apt to put it, "on"
him) was repeated so often that I saw it had become one of the town's
traditions. One bitter evening in February, they related, he was
approached upon the street by a ragged, whining, and shivering old
reprobate, notorious for the various ingenuities by which he had worn
out the patience of the charity organizations. He asked Beasley for a
dime. Beasley had no money in his pockets, but gave the man his
overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed with
a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold the