h warmth--laying up treasures of friendship against that possible
day of discovery and wrath that his guilty conscience suggested.

If Colonel Ward, striving to reciprocate, had not been so anxious
to please Cap'n Sproul in all his vagaries he would have barked
derisive laughter at the mere suggestion of the Captain Kidd treasure,
to the subject of which the simple seaman aforesaid led by easy stages.
The Colonel admitted that Mr. Bodge had located a well for him by
use of a witch-hazel rod, but allowed that the buried-treasure
proposition was too stiff batter for him to swallow. He did come at
last to accept Cap'n Sproul's dictum that there was once a Captain
Kidd, and that he had buried vast wealth somewhere--for Cap'n Sproul
as a sailorman seemed to be entitled to the possession of authority
on that subject. But beyond that point there was reservation that
didn't fit with Cap'n Sproul's calculations.

"Blast his old pork rind!" confided the Cap'n to Hiram. "I can circle
him round and round the pen easy enough, but when I try to head him
through the gate, he just sets back and blinks them hog eyes at me
and grunts. To get near him at all I had to act simple, and I reckon
I've overdone it. Now he thinks I don't know enough to know that old
Bodge is mostly whiskers and guesses. He's known Bodge longer'n I
have, and Bodge don't seem to be right bait. I can't get into his
wallet by first plan."

"It wasn't no kind of a plan, anyway," said Hiram, bluntly. "It
wouldn't be stickin' him good and plenty enough to have Bodge
unloaded onto him, just Bodge and northin' else done. 'Twasn't
complicated enough."

"I ain't no good on complicated plots," mourned Cap'n Sproul.

"You see," insisted Hiram, "you don't understand dealin' with jay
nature the same as I do. Takes the circus business to post you on
jays. Once in a while they'll bite a bare hook, but not often. Jays
don't get hungry till they see sure things. Your plain word of old
Cap Kidd and buried treasure sounds good, and that's all. In the
shell-game the best operator lets the edge of the shell rest on the
pea carelesslike, as though he didn't notice it, and then joggles
it down over as if by accident; and, honest, the jay hates to take
the money, it looks so easy! In the candy-game there's nothing doin'
until the jay thinks he catches you puttin' a twenty-dollar bill into
the package. Then look troubled, and try to stop him from buyin' that
package! You ain't done