ten scores of times upon a night
like this. Read it, you blaying ass! I'm not insane. Here, Mamie," I
continued, opening the bedroom door, "come out and make it up with me,
and go and kiss your husband; and I'll tell you what, after the supper,
let's go to some place where there's a band, and I'll waltz with you
till sunrise."

"What does it all mean?" cried Jim.

"It means we have a champagne supper to-night, and all go to Napa Valley
or to Monterey to-morrow," said I. "Mamie, go and get your things on;
and you, Jim, sit down right where you are, take a sheet of paper, and
tell Franklin Dodge to go to Texas. Mamie, you were right, my dear; I
was rich all the time, and didn't know it."

CHAPTER XIX. TRAVELS WITH A SHYSTER.

The absorbing and disastrous adventure of the Flying Scud was now quite
ended; we had dashed into these deep waters and we had escaped again to
starve, we had been ruined and were saved, had quarrelled and made up;
there remained nothing but to sing Te Deum, draw a line, and begin on a
fresh page of my unwritten diary. I do not pretend that I recovered all
I had lost with Mamie; it would have been more than I had merited; and
I had certainly been more uncommunicative than became either the partner
or the friend. But she accepted the position handsomely; and during
the week that I now passed with them, both she and Jim had the grace
to spare me questions. It was to Calistoga that we went; there was
some rumour of a Napa land-boom at the moment, the possibility of stir
attracted Jim, and he informed me he would find a certain joy in looking
on, much as Napoleon on St. Helena took a pleasure to read military
works. The field of his ambition was quite closed; he was done with
action; and looked forward to a ranch in a mountain dingle, a patch of
corn, a pair of kine, a leisurely and contemplative age in the green
shade of forests. "Just let me get down on my back in a hayfield," said
he, "and you'll find there's no more snap to me than that much putty."

And for two days the perfervid being actually rested. The third, he was
observed in consultation with the local editor, and owned he was in two
minds about purchasing the press and paper. "It's a kind of a hold for
an idle man," he said, pleadingly; "and if the section was to open up
the way it ought to, there might be dollars in the thing." On the fourth
day he was gone till dinner-time alone; on the fifth we made a long
picnic drive to the