horse-hair sofa, and rearranged her skirts.

"Know anything?" demanded Augustus of the stranger, breaking the
somewhat remarkable silence.

The stranger evidently did not understand. It was necessary for
Augustus, the witty, to advance further into that odd silence.

"What's going to pull off the Lincoln handicap? Tell me, and I'll go
out straight and put my shirt upon it."

"I think you would act unwisely," smiled the stranger; "I am not an
authority upon the subject."

"Not! Why they told me you were Captain Spy of the _Sporting
Life_--in disguise."

It would have been difficult for a joke to fall more flat. Nobody
laughed, though why Mr. Augustus Longcord could not understand, and
maybe none of his audience could have told him, for at Forty-eight
Bloomsbury Square Mr. Augustus Longcord passed as a humorist. The
stranger himself appeared unaware that he was being made fun of.

"You have been misinformed," assured him the stranger.

"I beg your pardon," said Mr. Augustus Longcord.

"It is nothing," replied the stranger in his sweet low voice, and
passed on.