d more use for ready money just then than he had for the
nag, so he offered to put it in cheap. But Cap. waved him away.

"'I'll need the money to buy meals with before long,' says he to the
fellow, 'so tempt me not to my going hungry.'

"This little incident seemed to make the old man feel bad; he locked
himself up in the office for four hours or so communing with his inner
self; but when he came out he was looking bright and gay.

"'Say,' says he, 'I've changed my mind and just bought that horse.'

"'I didn't see the man come back,' says I.

"'I made the deal over the 'phone,' says Cap. Then he pushes a thick wad
of penciled stuff at me. 'Here's some truck I want you to take over to
the printing house,' he goes on. 'When it's out and up the brute will be
well known.'

"I takes a look over the copy, and my hat was lifted two inches straight
off my head. The first one read something like this:

ADMIRAL

THE TALKING HORSE

TALKS LIKE A HUMAN BEING
VOCAL ORGANS DEVELOPED LIKE THOSE OF
A MAN
HEAR HIM SING THE BASS SOLO
"DOWN IN THE DEPTHS"

TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS

TO ANY ONE PROVING THESE CLAIMS
FAKE IN THE SLIGHTEST DEGREE

"'Reads good, don't it?' asks Cap., sort of beaming through his
nose-pinzes. 'But give a look at the others.'

"The next one was as bad as the first:

ADMIRAL!!!

THE HORSE WHO RECITES
THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
IN A DEEP BASS VOICE
AND WITH PERFECT ENUNCIATION

"'I didn't hear the fellow say the skate could do that kind of stuff,'
says I, just a bit dazed, after looking over a lot more of it.

"'He only handed it to me as a sort of last card,' says Cap., 'and
that's what made me change my mind about buying him. Get five thousand
twelve sheets in yellow and red; ten thousand three sheets; fifteen
thousand block one sheets with cut of the horse. And you can place an
order for as many black and white dodgers as they can turn out between
this and the end of the week. It's a big card and we're going into it up
to our eyebrows.'

"If I had had time to consider anything but hustling, I might have
thought the thing was a fake. But it was the old man's game and I left
him to do the worrying. I threw rush orders into the printers and soon
had the presses banging away on the stuff desired.

"Next day Cap. started a four-inch double-column notice in every paper
in town. I hired an army of distributers and began to put out the
dodgers as they came hot off the bat; then I got a coup