me you might make a decent v’yage yet. Couldn’t you?" 

He didn’t know. Perhaps he could. But what was the use of talkin’ that way? For him to pick up a thousand would be about as easy as for a paralyzed man with boxin’ gloves on to pick up a flea, or words to that effect. No, no, ’twas no use! he must go to the poorhouse! and so forth and so on. 

"You hold on," I says. "Don’t you engage your poorhouse berth yet. You keep mum and say nothin’ to nobody and let me think this over a spell. I need somethin’ to keep me interested and ... I’ll see you to-morrow sometime. Good night." 

I went home thinkin’ and I thought till pretty nigh one o’clock. Then I decided I was a fool even to think for five minutes. Hadn’t I sworn to be careful and never take another risk? I was sorry for poor old Winthrop, but I couldn’t afford to mix pity and good legal tender; that was the sort of blue and yeller drink that filled the poor-debtors’ courts. And, besides, wasn’t I pridin’ myself on bein’ a gentleman of leisure. If I got mixed up in this, no tellin’ what I might be led into. Hadn’t I bragged to Pike about—Oh, I was a fool! 

Which was all right, only, after listenin’ to the breakfast conversation at the Poquit House, down I goes to the store and afore the forenoon was over I was Winthrop Adams Beanblossom’s silent partner to the extent of twenty-five hundred dollars. I was busy once more and glad of it, even though Pike _was_ goin’ to get a hat free.Beanblossom and I sat down to hold our usual autopsy over the remains of the fortnight’s trade. We’d lost twenty-one dollars and sixty-eight cents, and the only comfort in that was that ’twas seventy-six cents less than the two weeks previous. The weather had been some cooler and less stuff had sp’iled on our hands; that accounted for the saving.

Beanblossom—I’d got into the habit of callin’ him "Pullet" ’cause his general build was so similar to a moultin’ chicken—he vowed he couldn’t understand it.

"I think I shall give up buyin’ so liberally, Cap’n Snow," says he. "If we didn’t keep on buyin’ we shouldn’t lose half so much," he says.

"Yes," says I, "that’s logic. And if we give up sellin’ we shouldn’t lose the other half. You and me are all right as fur as we go, Pullet, and I guess we’ve gone about as fur as we can."

"Please don’t call me ’Pullet,’" he says, dignified. "When I think of what I once was, it—"

"S-sh-h!" I 

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