ite alone, I ran off a hurried account of my "deal," then
proposed that he should "accidentally" meet the officers near the
border, ring in with them as a parson would be likely to do, tell
them he suspicioned the whiskey was directly at the opposite side
of the Reserve to where I really had stored it, get them wild-goose
chasing miles away, and give me a chance to clear the stuff and
myself as well; in addition to the hundred I would give him twenty
per cent. on the entire deal. He changed color and the sweat stood
out on his forehead.

"One hundred dollars this time to-morrow night," I said. He didn't
move. "And twenty per cent. One hundred dollars this time to-morrow
night," I repeated.

He began to weaken. I lit my pipe and looked indifferent, though
I knew I was a lost man if he refused--and informed. Suddenly he
stretched his hand across the table, impulsively, and closed it
over mine. I knew I had him solid then.

"Dan," he choked up, "it's a terrible thing for a divinity student
to do; but--" his fingers tightened nervously. "I'm with you!" Then
in a moment, "Find some whiskey, Dan. I'm done up."

He soon got braced enough to ask me who was in the deal, and what
timber we expected to trade for. When I told him Lige Smith and
Jack Jackson were going to help me, he looked scared and asked me
if I thought they would split on him. He was so excited I thought
him cowardly, but the poor devil had reason enough, I supposed, to
want to keep the transaction from the ears of his father, or worse
still--the bishop. He seemed easier when I assured him the boys
were square, and immensely gratified at the news that I had already
traded six quarts of the stuff for over a hundred dollars' worth of
cordwood.

"We'll never get it across the river to the markets," he said
dolefully. "I came over this morning in a canoe. Ice is all out."

"What about the Onondaga Jam?" I said. He winked.

"That'll do. I'd forgotten it," he answered, and chirped up right
away like a kid.

But I hadn't forgotten the Jam. It had been a regular gold-mine to
me all that open winter, when the ice froze and thawed every week
and finally jammed itself clean to the river bottom in the throat
of the bend up at Onondaga, and the next day the thermometer fell
to eleven degrees below zero, freezing it into a solid block that
bridged the river for traffic, and saved my falling fortunes.

"And where's the whiskey hidden?" he asked after awhile.

"No