With his arm in Harry's he passed from one coterie to another in the hope that he might catch some word which would be interesting enough to induce him to fill one of the chairs, even for a brief half-hour, but nothing reached his ears except politics and crops, and he cared for neither.

Harding--the pessimist of the club--a man who always had a grievance (and this time with reason, for the money stringency was becoming more acute every day), tried to beguile him into a seat beside him, but he shook his head.

He knew all about Harding, and wanted none of his kind of talk--certainly not to-day.
"Think of it!" he had heard the growler say to Judge Pancoast as he was about to pass his chair--"the Patapsco won't give me a cent to move my crops, and I hear all the others are in the same fix.

You can't get a dollar on a house and lot except at a frightful rate of interest.

I tell you everything is going to ruin.