earnest conversation.

“There they are,” David said, pointing at them.

“That’s them, all right,” Cochran agreed. “And right nice sociable fellers they are, too. Don’t see how it kin be that two such nice fellers as them could be out to skin a good old feller like me. Think I’ll go over and tell ’em what I think of ’em, right now.”

“Suit yourself,” said David. “We’ll come along and see you through.”

Cochran moved as if to carry out an intention, then stopped, looked at the partners and wagged his head slowly and solemnly.

“Nope,” he said, then paused and grinned. “I reckon I’ve got the best of it as it is—got their fifteen hundred, so I’ll just hang on to it and leave ’em alone, and stick around with you two fellers. I was mighty lonesome yisttiday without you two and— By heck! I’m glad you ain’t seasick any more. Reminds me of a story about a feller that—”

And the partners glanced at each other, as if admitting a great mistake; for the garrulous one was on again, had promised to stay with them indefinitely, closely, intimately, and—talk their heads off! He clung to them like a loving leach, or as a bride of seventy adheres to a bridegroom of twenty, or as does the unbreakable limpet to its gray rock. His sole virtue was that he never repeated himself. Their sole hope was that some time he would run down, get hoarse, or have paralysis of the tongue. He tried indirectly to learn all about them, where they had been, their business, whither bound, and what luck they had endured or profited by; but the partners, bored, surfeited with words, and casting about for means of escape, maintained their customary reticence.

David was the first to escape and most callously deserted his partner; but Goliath, being less diplomatic, eventually invented an excuse and ran, rather than walked, to a distant part of the ship. The partners met in their cabin and took turns in imprecating the kindliness that had inspired their well-meant interference.

“I don’t give a cuss what happens to him now. He’s been warned, and if he loses his wad it’s not our fault,” David asserted.

“Neither do I care what happens to him,” Goliath growled. “I ain’t no hero, nor Christian martyr, nor nothin’ like that. All I want is to have him keep away from me. I’m goin’ to read from now on, right here in this cabin. I’m afraid to go out on the deck.”

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