The apparition in the door was a shabby representation of what J. Quincy Plume had been in his palmy days.  He bore the last marks of extreme dissipation; his eyes were dull, his face bloated, and his hair thin and long.  His clothes looked as if they had served him by night as well as by day for a long time.  His shoes were broken, and his hat, once the emblem of his station and high spirits, was battered and rusty.

“How are you, Mr. Keith?” he began boldly enough.  But his assumption of something of his old air of bravado died out under Keith’s icy and steady gaze, and he stepped only inside of the room, and, taking off his hat, waited uneasily.

“What do you want of me?” demanded Keith, leaning back in his chair and looking at him coldly.

“Well, I thought I would like to have a little talk with you about a matter—­”

Keith, without taking his eyes from his face, shook his head slowly.

“About a friend of yours,” continued Plume.

Again Keith shook his head very slowly.

“I have a little information that might be of use to you—­that you’d like to have.”

“I don’t want it.”

“You would if you knew what it was.”

“No.”

“Yes, you would.  It’s about Squire Rawson’s granddaughter—­about her marriage to that man Wickersham.”

“How much do you want for it?” demanded Keith.

Plume advanced slowly into the room and looked at a chair.

“Don’t sit down.  How much do you want for it?” repeated Keith.

“Well, you are a rich man now, and—­”

“I thought so.”  Keith rose.  “However rich I am, I will not pay you a cent.”  He motioned Plume to the door.

“Oh, well, if that’s the way you take it!” Plume drew himself up and stalked to the door.  Keith reseated himself and again took up his pen.

At the door Plume turned and saw that Keith had put him out of his mind and was at work again.

“Yes, Keith, if you knew what information I have—­”

Keith sat up suddenly.

“Go out of here!”

“If you’d only listen—­”

Keith stood up, with a sudden flame in his eyes.

“Go on, I say.  If you do not, I will put you out.  It is as much as I can do to keep my hands off you.  You could not say a word that I would believe on any subject.”

“I will swear to this.”

“Your oath would add nothing to it.”

Plume waited, and after a moment’s reflection began in a different key.

“Mr. Keith, I did not come here to sell you anything—­”

“Yes, you did.”

“No, I did not.  I did not come—­only for that.  If I could have sold it, I don’t say I wouldn’t, for I need money—­the Lord knows how much I need it!  I have not a cent in the world to buy me a mouthful to eat—­or drink.  I came to tell you something that only I know—­”

“I have told you that I would not believe you on oath,” began Keith, impatiently.