The first visit that Keith received was from J. Quincy Plume, the editor of the Gumbolt Whistle.  He had the honor of knowing his distinguished father, he said, and had once had the pleasure of being at his old home.  He had seen Keith’s name on the book, and had simply called to offer him any services he or his paper could render him.  “There are so few gentlemen in this ——­ hole,” he explained, “that I feel that we should all stand together.”  Keith, knowing J. Quincy’s history, inwardly smiled.

Mr. Plume had aged since he was the speaker of the carpet-bag legislature; his black hair had begun to be sprinkled with gray, and had receded yet farther back on his high forehead, his hazel eyes were a little bleared; and his full lips were less resolute than of old.  He had evidently seen bad times since he was the facile agent of the Wickersham interests.  He wore a black suit and a gay necktie which had once been gayer, a shabby silk hat, and patent-leather shoes somewhat broken.

His addiction to cards and drink had contributed to Mr. Plume’s overthrow, and after a disappearance from public view for some time he had turned up just as Gumbolt began to be talked of, with a small sheet somewhat larger than a pocket-handkerchief, which, in prophetic tribute to Gumbolt’s future manufactures, he christened the Gumbolt Whistle.

Mr. Plume offered to introduce Keith to “the prettiest woman in Gumbolt,” and, incidentally, to “the best cocktail” also.  “Terpsichore is a nymph who practises the Terpsichorean art; indeed, I may say, presides over a number of the arts, for she has the best faro-bank in town, and the only bar where a gentleman can get a drink that will not poison a refined stomach.  She is, I may say, the leader of Gumbolt society.”

Keith shook his head; he had come to work, he declared.

“Oh, you need not decline; you will have to know Terpy.  I am virtue itself; in fact, I am Joseph—­nowadays.  You know, I belong to the cloth?” Keith’s expression indicated that he had heard this fact.  “But even I have yielded to her charms—­intellectual, I mean, of course.”

Mr. Plume withdrew after having suggested to Keith to make him a small temporary loan, or, if more convenient, to lend him the use of his name on a little piece of bank-paper “to tide over an accidental and unexpected emergency,” assuring Keith that he would certainly take it up within sixty days.

Unfortunately for Keith, Plume’s cordiality had made so much impression on him that he was compliant enough to lend him the use of his name, and as neither at the expiration of sixty days, nor at any other time, did Mr. Plume ever find it convenient to take up his note, Keith found himself later under the necessity of paying it himself.  This circumstance, it is due to Mr. Plume to say, he always deplored, and doubtless with sincerity.

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