"
"What, Sandy, a nobleman from Hoboken? How is that?"
"Easy enough. Duffer kept a sausage-shop and never saved a cent in
his life because he used to give all his spare meat to the poor, in
a quiet way. Not tramps,--no, the other sort--the sort that will
starve before they will beg--honest square people out of work.
Dick used to watch hungry-looking men and women and children, and
track them home, and find out all about them from the neighbors,
and then feed them and find them work. As nobody ever saw him give
anything to anybody, he had the reputation of being mean; he died
with it, too, and everybody said it was a good riddance; but the
minute he landed here, they made him a baronet, and the very first
words Dick the sausage-maker of Hoboken heard when he stepped upon
the heavenly shore were, 'Welcome, Sir Richard Duffer!' It
surprised him some, because he thought he had reasons to believe he
was pointed for a warmer climate than this one."
All of a sudden the whole region fairly rocked under the crash of
eleven hundred and one thunder blasts, all let off at once, and
Sandy says,--
"There, that's for the barkeep."
I jumped up and says,--
"Then let's be moving along, Sandy; we don't want to miss any of
this thing, you know."
"Keep your seat," he says; "he is only just telegraphed, that is
all."
"How?"
"That blast only means that he has been sighted from the signal-
station.
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