With this clue, for the first time things began to clear up to me, and when the trail broadened enough to permit it, I pushed my mule up alongside of Cullen and asked "The letters contain proxies for the K. & A. election next Friday?" He nodded his head.

Only the death of one of the M.W. directors, who held eight thousand shares of K. & A., got us in this hole, for the G.S. put up a relation to contest the will, and so delayed the obtaining of letters of administration, blocking his executors from giving a proxy.

While I was engrossed with my many duties, the superintendent cunningly went north and secured proxies in his name, and returning, beat me by two votes, secured for himself my position as general manager, and then proceeded to wreck the whole enterprise, much to his own pecuniary benefit, while my friends who had invested on my representations, blamed me for their losses though I was entirely innocent of any wrong whatever.

"I handed my proxy the half-crown which he sheepishly demanded, with an extra shilling 'for a glass of beer,' and saw him go on his way rejoicing.

" "I hope he will, madam; though Lord Eltringham holds his proxies, in my absence, in all important questions before the house.

But I am rather making out a proxy for a letter than sending you news.

A proxy to vote, if you pleasea proxy to consent to arrangements of estates, if wanted; but a proxy sent down in the Canterbury Fly to take the Creator to witness that the Archbishop, detained in town by business or pleasure, will never violate that foundation of piety over which he presidesall this seems to me an act of the most extraordinary indolence ever recorded in history."

"As the G.S. by trickery has dishonestly tied up some of your proxies, they ought not to object if we do the same by honest means; and I think I can manage so that Uncle Sam will prevent those proxies from being voted at Ash Fork on Friday.

"The Missouri Western and the Great Southern are fighting for control," he explained, "and we should have won but for the three blocks of Eastern stock that had promised their proxies to the G.S. Rather than lose the fight, we arranged to learn when those proxies were mailedthat was what kept me behindand then to hold up the train that carried them.

When we found that Baldwin had gone on the bond, I knew that there was a scheme of some sort in the move, and, taking Fred aside, I warned him against trying to recover the proxies.

It was amazing to hear wealthy people, who had bought of me a few hundred dollars' worth of stock, and who really felt the loss of it much less than they would suffer from a fly bite, whine as if this had reduced them to the direst poverty, and insinuate that I, who had lost manifold more than they, should refund, though the loss was entirely the result of their own stupidity in failing to send me the proxies I had asked for by mail.

* SWEARING BY PROXY.

Just as the fragments of the papers were passed over to Mr. Camp, he was joined by Baldwin and the judge, and Camp held the torn pieces up to them, saying "They've torn the proxies in two.