beverage. "Sic transit gloria mundi! That was when the great Captain
Kidd Havens was piling up the millions which his survivors are
spending with such charming insouciance. He was plundering a
railroad, and the original progenitor of the Wallings tried to buy
the control away from him, and Havens issued ten or twenty millions
of new stock overnight, in the face of a court injunction, and got
away with most of his money. It reads like opera bouffe, you
know--they had a regular armed camp across the river for about six
months--until Captain Kidd went up to Albany with half a million
dollars' worth of greenbacks in a satchel, and induced the
legislature to legalize the proceedings. That was just after the
war, you know, but I remember it as if it were yesterday. It seems
strange to think that anyone shouldn't know about it."

"I know about Havens in a general way," said Montague.

"Yes," said the Major. "But I know in a particular way, because I've
carried some of that railroad's paper all these years, and it's
never paid any dividends since. It has a tendency to interfere with
my appreciation of John's lavish hospitality."

Montague was reminded of the story of the Roman emperor who pointed
out that money had no smell.

"Maybe not," said the Major. "But all the same, if you were
superstitious, you might make out an argument from the Havens
fortune. Take that poor girl who married the Count."

And the Major went on to picture the denouement of that famous
international alliance, which, many years ago, had been the