most expensive hotel in this town, and rode away.

“Sorry for him, were you? Well, you needn’t be sorry any more. He’s most likely forgotten all about you two by now, and is living up at the most swell hotel in this town, in a suite of rooms for which he pays about fifty bucks a day; same rooms that a Russian prince had a year or two ago. If you’ve got sympathy to waste you’d better hang some of it on to Crump Smith and Slippery Murdock; because if skins were overcoats and this was nothing but mid-summer, they’d shiver in the wind.”

The partners, in a daze, got up and walked outside. The docks were busy. Masts showed here and there against the sky line. Teamsters drove straining horses hauling highly piled wagons into the caverns, and the rumble of hoofs and wheels echoed like a song of export in the morning air. The screech of a hundred steam winches told of cargoes being lowered into holds. Off toward the ferry nave the clanging of street cars joined ragged symphony. The giant looked away toward the north, as if scenting forests and mountains and cabins, and then said, “Humph! So that’s that! We’re always buttin’ into somethin’ that ain’t worth while. And—we thought he was the man that talked too much, and didn’t sabe how to take care of himself.”

“It’s me and you that ought to have a nurse leadin’ us by the ears,” David replied, then paused, seemed to quest for some excuse, and then scowled upward at his stalwart and time-tried partner, and said admonishingly: “Goliath, you’re all right; but—but—it’s you that talks too damn much!”

And Goliath, whose habitual conversation consisted of a mere “yes” or “no” cogitated with the utmost seriousness, pondered as if reviewing all the words he had ever uttered, remembering them all, and uttered a long speech. He blinked, wet his lips with his tongue, hesitated, and then very gravely said, “Yep!”

Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the November 7, 1920 issue of The Popular Magazine.

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