The busybodies, good-natured but garrulous, did not have to rehearse the story to its end; it would have been superfluous.

Be it said here, however, that Rosalie was not long in settling many of the speculators straight in their minds.

It seemed improbable that it should not be as they had thought and hoped.

The news soon reached Blootch Peabody and Ed Higgins, and, both eager to revive a blighted hope, in high spirits, called to see Rosalie on the same night.

It is on record that neither of them uttered two dozen words between eight o'clock and ten, so bitterly was the presence of the other resented.
March came, and with it, to the intense amazement of Anderson Crow, the ever-mysterious thousand dollars, a few weeks late.