ave got it into their heads
that anything which pays more than four or five per cent. must be
risky, and so they don't set up banks here, as they surely would do but
for their foolish timidity. The prospect of a big return for their money
simply scares them out of their seven senses. So Hallam's bank and mine
have a monopoly of as pretty a business as you'll find in a day's walk.
Why, when the rush was on last winter, and twenty steamboats a day were
leaving Cairo with full cargoes--to say nothing of great fleets of grain
barges--- Hallam and I both went to New York with our pockets full of
government bonds, and borrowed money on them for sixty or ninety days.
We paid six per cent. per annum for the money, and got from one-half to
one per cent. a day on most of it by advancing on grain drafts, with
bills of lading attached. It was as easy as falling off a log, and as
safe as insuring pig-iron under water."

"I have some notion of all that," answered Temple, "and that's the sort
of investment I'm looking for. I might take in some more speculative
things, but I greatly want to invest a few thousand dollars in the stock
of one or other of these two national banks. Could you find somebody
willing to sell?"

Tandy had expected this, and had prepared himself for it. But he
pretended to think for a moment before replying. Then he said:

"As to Hallam's bank, it's useless to try. Hallam and Stafford own the
whole thing, except that they have put a share or two into the hands of
members of their own families, just by way of qualifying them to serve
as directors, as the law requires. Neither one of them would sell a
share for twice its market price. The same thing is true, in a general
way at least, of our bank. The stock is so good a thing that nobody who
has got any of it ever wants to part with it. But it has always been our
policy to interest the people in the bank by letting them hold some of
its stock. So a good deal of it is held in small lots around town, and
now and then one of these is put into my hands for sale. I have four
shares now to sell. It belongs to a tug captain who is down on his luck
just now, and must sell. He wants more than the market price, but the
bank has lent him money on it nearly up to its face value, and so I can
do pretty much as I please with it. Ordinarily I should buy it myself,
but I'm in so many things just now, and besides, I'd like to have you
with us."

Tandy did not say that since he