had nerve, had Agamemnon G. Jones.

"Hy," says he, "you'll have to watch the play a little. Mebbe you'd
ought to change some, just as it happens. I'll have to do my lying
according to the way the circumstances fall, so keep your eye peeled,
and whatever you do, do it from the bottom of your heart. I can fix it
so long as you don't queer me by shacking along too easy."

So saying he fixes the new necktie he'd bought down at the corner,
tilts the new hat a little, and braces ahead. He could look more
dressed up on 20 cents' worth of new clothes than some men could with a
whole store behind 'em.

When we got into the place the folks gazed at us. Aggy was leading me
by the hand.

"There," says he, very gentle. "Now sit down, and I'll tell you a
story by and by."

I tore a hole in the coat, and mumbled to myself, and sat down
according to directions.

Then Aggy walks up to where the stud-poker game was blooming.

"Gentlemen," says he, making them a bow, "I trust it won't
inconvenience you any to have my poor unfortunate pardner in your midst
for awhile? I can't desert him, and I do like to play a little cards
now and then."

"What's the matter with him?" asks the dealer.

Ag taps his head.

"Violent?" asks the dealer.

Now, Ag didn't know just how he wanted to have it, so he didn't commit
himself to nothing.

"Oh, I can always handle him," says he.

"Well, come right in," says the dealer. "They're only a dollar a
stack."

"Well," says Ag, "I'll just invest in $10 worth to pass away the
time--you take dust, don't you?"

"I used to say I wouldn't take anybody's dust," says the dealer, being
funny with such a good customer, "but since I've struck this country
I've found I've gotter."

Ag pulls out the old buckskin sack, that would hold enough to support
quite a family through the winter. It was stuffed with gravel stones.

"Oh, here!" says he, whilst he was fumbling with the strings. "No use
to open that--I've got another package--what you might call small
change." Then he digs up Uncle Peters' cartridge shell.

I want to tell you I had my own troubles keeping my face together while
Ag was doing his work. You never see any such good-natured,
old-fashioned patriarch as he was. When they beat him out of a hand
he'd laugh fit to kill himself.

"You're welcome, boys!" he'd say. "There's plenty more of it."

At the same time, you wouldn't live high on all you could make out of
Aggy on a