The American Claimant

The Colonel reflected.

'I'll tell you. Put a personal in the Baltimore Sun. Word it like this:

'A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE.'

'Hold on. Which arm has he lost?'

'The right.'

'Good. Now then—

'A. DROP ME A LINE, PETE, EVEN IF YOU HAVE to write with your left hand. Address X. Y. Z., General Postoffice, Washington. From YOU KNOW WHO.'

'There—that'll fetch him.'

'But he won't know who—will he?'

'No, but he'll want to know, won't he?'

'Why, certainly—I didn't think of that. What made you think of it?'

'Knowledge of human curiosity. Strong trait, very strong trait.'

'Now I'll go to my room and write it out and enclose a dollar and tell them to print it to the worth of that.'

CHAPTER IV.

A Yankee makes an offer for 'Pigs in the Clover'—By the death of a relative Sellers becomes the rightful Earl of Rossmore and consequently the American Clairnant—Gwendolen is sent for from school—The remains of the late Claimant and brother to be shipped to England—Hawkins and Sellers nail the hatchments on 'Rossmore Towers'

The day wore itself out. After dinner the two friends put in a long and harassing evening trying to decide what to do with the five thousand dollars reward which they were going to get when they should find One-Armed Pete, and catch him, and prove him to be the right person, and extradite him, and ship him to Tahlequah in the Indian Territory. But there were so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs. Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said:

'What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?'

Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed. Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle, and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there might be to do something with it commercially. He did not have to go far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged in repairing cheap chairs and other second- hand furniture. This man examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked:

'Is it patented?'

'Patent applied for.'

'That will answer. What do you want for it?'

'What will it retail for?'

'Well, twenty-five cents, I should think.'

'What will you give for the exclusive right?'

'I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents royalty on each one.'

Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing. So he said:

'All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper.' He went his way with the paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both beneficiaries could not be hit upon.

He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief and booming with glad excitement—working both these emotions successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said:

'Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore—congratulate me!'

He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his arms about her and said—'You will bear up, for my sake, my lady—it had to happen, it was decreed.'

She bore up very well, and said:

'It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks.'

The rightful earl continued:

'I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her to—'

'What Lady Gwendolen?'

'Our poor daughter, who, alas!—'

'Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?'

'There—please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease from using my family name, now, Lady Rossmore.'

'Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?'

'In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible, to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or the Earl, or his Lordship, and—'

'Oh, scat! I can't ever do it, Berry.'

'But indeed you must, my love—we must live up to our altered position and submit with what grace we may to its requirements.'

'Well, all right, have it your own way; I've never set my wishes against your commands yet, Mul—my lord, and it's late to begin now, though to my mind it's the rottenest foolishness that ever was.'

'Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again.'

'But—Gwendolen! I don't know how I am ever going to stand that name. Why, a body wouldn't know Sally Sellers in it. It's too large for her; kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it's a most outlandish sort of a name, anyway, to my mind.'

'You'll not hear her find fault with it, my lady.'

'That's a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she was born to it. She never got it from me, that's sure. And sending her to that silly college hasn't helped the matter any—just the other way.'

'Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American nobility. Castellated college-buildings— towers and turrets and an imitation moat—and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter Scott's books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses, with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots, and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind them—'

'And they don't learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But send for the Lady Gwendolen—do; for I reckon the peerage regulations require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn for those Arkansas blatherskites she's