t up, mopped his nose, and told the story of the missing wad
of bills. "I'm not crazy," he wound up. "Only--your father has never
seen more than a five-dollar bill at a time, and my father could buy up
this boat once a week and never miss it."

"You don't know what the _We're Here's_ worth. Your dad must hev a pile
o' money. How did he git it? Dad sez loonies can't shake out a straight
yarn. Go ahead."

"In gold mines and things, West."

"I've read o' that kind o' business. Out West, too? Does he go around
with a pistol on a trick-pony, same ez the circus? They call that the
Wild West, and I've heard that their spurs an' bridles was solid
silver."

"You are a chump!" said Harvey, amused in spite of himself. "My father
hasn't any use for ponies. When he wants to ride he takes his car."

"Haow? Lobster-car?"

"No. His own private car, of course. You've seen a private car some
time in your life?"

"Slatin Beeman he hez one," said Dan, cautiously. "I saw her at the
Union Depot in Boston, with three niggers hoggin' her run." (Dan meant
cleaning the windows.) "But Slatin Beeman he owns 'baout every railroad
on Long Island, they say, an' they say he's bought 'baout ha'af Noo
Hampshire an' run a line fence around her, an' filled her up with lions
an' tigers an' bears an' buffalo an' crocodiles an' such all. Slatin
Beeman he's a millionaire. I've seen his car. Yes?"

"Well, my father's what they call a multi-millionaire, and he has two
private cars. One's named for me, the 'Harvey', and one for my mother,
the 'Constance'."

"Hold on," said Dan. "Dad don't ever let me swear, but I guess you can.
'Fore we go ahead, I want you to say hope you may die if you're lyin'."

"Of course," said Harvey.

"The ain't 'niff. Say, 'Hope I may die if I ain't speaking' truth.'"

"Hope I may die right here," said Harvey, "if every word I've spoken
isn't the cold truth."

"Hundred an' thirty-four dollars an' all?" said Dan. "I heard ye
talkin' to Dad, an' I ha'af looked you'd be swallered up, same's Jonah."

Harvey protested himself red in the face. Dan was a shrewd young person
along his own lines, and ten minutes' questioning convinced him that
Harvey was not lying--much. Besides, he had bound himself by the most
terrible oath known to boyhood, and yet he sat, alive, with a red-ended
nose, in the scuppers, recounting marvels upon marvels.

"Gosh!" said Dan at last from the very bottom of his soul when Harvey
had completed an in