ned it slowly.

"Who sold you the Can with the Diamond Notch?" she asked.

"The man standing by your side."

"He has wronged you. The can is not his."

"He says he made it."

"Liar! He never curved it in the piece."

"I don't much care whether he did or not. It is mine now, anyhow."

"It is my brother's can. No other hand made it. Look! Do you see this
notch on the piece of sheet iron where the handle is fastened to the
sides?"

"I do."

"Is it not shaped like a diamond?"

"It is."

"By that mark I identify it. My brother cuts that diamond-shaped notch
in all the work he puts out from his hands. It is his private mark. The
shopkeepers have knowledge of it. There is a value on the cans with that
notch shaped like a diamond. This man here makes cans when he is not
drunk, but the notch to them is square. The shopkeepers have knowledge
of them, too, for they do not last. The handles fall out of them. He has
never given his time to the art, and so does not know how to rivet
them."

"She vilifies me," said Mac-an-Ward, _sotto voce_.

"Then I am glad he has not sold me one of his own," said Festus Clasby.
"I have a fancy for the lasting article."

"You may be able to buy it yet," said the woman. "My brother is lying
sick of the fever, and I have his right to sell the Cans with the
Diamond Notch on the handles where they are riveted."

"But I have bought it already."

"This man," said the damsel, in a tone which discounted the husband,
"had no right to sell it. If it is not his property, but the property of
my brother, won't you say that he nor no other man has a right to sell
it?"

Festus Clasby felt puzzled. He was unaccustomed to dealing with people
who raised questions of title. His black brows knit.

"How can a man who doesn't own a thing sell a thing?" she persisted. "Is
it a habit of yours to sell that which you do not own?"

"It is not," Festus Clasby said, feeling that an assault had been
wantonly made on his integrity as a trader. "No one could ever say that
of me. Honest value was ever my motto."

"And the motto of my brother who is sick with the fever. I will go to
him and say, 'I met the most respectable-looking man in all Europe, who
put a value on your can because of the diamond notch.' I will pay into
his hands the one-and-six which is its price."

Festus Clasby had, when taken out of his own peculiar province, a heavy
mind, and the type of mind that will range along side-issues and g