of trouble without waking you up, if they hadn't already waked you up."

"Great guns, THIS is a go!" says the king; and both of them looked pretty
sick and tolerable silly. They stood there a-thinking and scratching
their heads a minute, and the duke he bust into a kind of a little raspy
chuckle, and says:

"It does beat all how neat the niggers played their hand. They let on to
be SORRY they was going out of this region! And I believed they WAS
sorry, and so did you, and so did everybody. Don't ever tell ME any more
that a nigger ain't got any histrionic talent. Why, the way they played
that thing it would fool ANYBODY. In my opinion, there's a fortune in
'em. If I had capital and a theater, I wouldn't want a better lay-out
than that--and here we've gone and sold 'em for a song. Yes, and ain't
privileged to sing the song yet. Say, where IS that song--that draft?"

"In the bank for to be collected. Where WOULD it be?"

"Well, THAT'S all right then, thank goodness."

Says I, kind of timid-like:

"Is something gone wrong?"

The king whirls on me and rips out:

"None o' your business! You keep your head shet, and mind y'r own
affairs--if you got any. Long as you're in this town don't you forgit
THAT--you hear?" Then he says to the duke, "We got to jest swaller it
and say noth'n': mum's the word for US."

As they was starting down the ladder the duke he chuckles again, and
says:

"Quick sales AND small profits! It's a good business--yes."

The king snarls around on him and says:

"I was trying to do for the best in sellin' 'em out so quick. If the
profits has turned out to be none, lackin' considable, and none to carry,
is it my fault any more'n it's yourn?"

"Well, THEY'D be in this house yet and we WOULDN'T if I could a got my
advice listened to."

The king sassed back as much as was safe for him, and then swapped around
and lit into ME again. He give me down the banks for not coming and
TELLING him I see the niggers come out of his room acting that way--said
any fool would a KNOWED something was up. And then waltzed in and cussed
HIMSELF awhile, and said it all come of him not laying late and taking
his natural rest that morning, and he'd be blamed if he'd ever do it
again. So they went off a-jawing; and I felt dreadful glad I'd worked it
all off on to the niggers, and yet hadn't done the niggers no harm by it.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BY and by it was getting-up time. So I come do