Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-03-24

ARE YOU FIXED HERE?"
 small patrimony into cash-som' $l0,000 of 1t. To set over against the bill of exchange for this amount, whict he had brought to Gaston a yeal earlier, there were clean name, g few hundred dollars in the bank. six lots. bought and paid for, in one of the Gaston suburbs, and 8 vast deal ol experience.
 Kent ran his hands through his hair, opened the check-book and hastily filled out check payable to himself for the remaining few hundreds When he reached the Apache National on the corner of Colorado and Texas streets, he was the 127th man in the queue, which extended around the corner and doubled back and forth in cross-street to the stoppage of all traffic. The announcement in the Clarion had done its work, and the baleful flower of panic, which is the juggler's rose for quick-growing pos- abilities, was filling the very air of the street with it's acrid perfume-the the scent of all others that soonest drives men mad.
 Major James Guilford. the presi- dent of the Apache National, was in the cage with the sweating paying tel lers, and it was to him that Kent pre- sented his check when his turn came
 What! You, too, Kent?" said the president, responsibility. T thought you had more backbone"
 Kent shook his head.
 'Gaston has absorbed nine-tenths of the money I brought here; I'll ab- sorb the remaining tenth myself, if it's just the same to you, Major. Thank you" And the 127th man pocketed his salvage from the wreck end fought his way out through the jam at the doors. Two hours farther along in the forenoon the Apache National sus- pended payment, and the bank exam iner was wired for.
 For audiences and thoroughgoing completeness the Gaston bubble-burst- ing was record breaker. For a week and day there was a frantic struggle for enlargement, and by the expira- tion of fortnight the life was pretty we'll trampled out of the civic corpse and the stench began to arise.
 Flight upon any terms then became the order of the day. and if the place had been suddenly plague-smitten the panicky exodus could scarcely have been more headlong.
 Kent stayed partly because a local attorney for the railroad was as neces- sary in Gaston the bereaved as in Cas- ton the strenuous; partly, also, be- cause he was a student of his kind, and the broken city gave him labor atory opportunities for the study of human nature at it's worst
 He marked the raising of the black flag as the Gaston castaways, getting sorrily afioat one by one, cleared their decks for action. Some Bluebeard ad- miral there will always be for such stressful occasions, and David Kent, standing aside and growing cynical day by day, laid even chances on Hawk, the ex-district attorney, on Major Guilford, and on one Jasper c. Bucks, mayor of Gaston the rides cent. f Afterward he was to learn that he had underrated the gifts of the former mayor. For when the famine time was fully come, and there were no more argosies drifting Gastonward for the buccaneers to sack and scuttle. if was Jasper c. Bucks who called a con- ference. of his fellow verrolves, set forth his new cast for fortune, and brought the junto. the child of sheer desperation fercely at hay. into be- Ing
 IL was in the autumn of that first 'ataclysmic year that Secretary Lor- ng. traveling from Boston to the tate capital on mission for theWest- m Pacific, stopped over a train with Kent. After a rather dispiriting din- Ter in the deserted Mid-Continent afs. and some PIozing of the field of recollection in Rents rooms in the Tarquhsr building. they took the de- srted street in the golden tviIisht to rals to the railway station
 It vas a decent thing for you to