omehow I hate to do it, now I know some good people.
Bet your life I'm solid over there!"

He points with his thumb toward Prairie avenue.

"I'm a good friend of the richest woman, I guess, there is in the
world!" His tongue pops like a champagne cork. "I don't like to keep
no saloon."

"I shall sell as little liquor as possible," the druggist says,
conceiving the drift of Corkey's ideas.

"Pardner, you must have been a hard drinker yourself. How did your
voice get so husky?"

"It was so always."

"It was so the first day I met you. Remember the dedication?"

"Yes; do you remember the bank?"

"Yep. Don't you know I tell you I was going to find that yawl?"

"I do."

"Well, I find it."

Does David Lockwin color? Or are those features forever crimson?

"You do look like a man as has been a red-hot sport in his day. Ever
do anything in the ring? Let me try that red liquor of yours. Let's
see if it tears. Oh, yes, about the yawl. I just go to the widow the
other day and ask her for three hundred cases on the search. Well, she
give me the three hundred and want me to take more, and I go right to
Collingwood. The duck he show me the boat, and you bet your sweet life
I hid her where she never will be seen. What's the use of tearing up
the widow's feelings again?"

"You did right!" says the husky voice, the lover all the time wishing
the discovery had been published. He feels like a claimant. He is not
sure the world would believe David Lockwin to be alive if he could
prove it.

"Chalmers, I'm going to tell you something that I haven't said to
nobody. I hid that boat, and I threw away big money--I know I did.
But I could get all the money I wanted of her--a free graft. Give me
another slug of that budge."

The druggist is filling a small graduate with whisky for Corkey. What
is Corkey about to say?

"They're having high old times in Russia. That was a great bomb they
git in on his nobs last winter."

"The czar? Yes."

"I reckon they're going to git the feller they've got on top there now,
too, don't you? They say he put on ten crowns yesterday. What do they
call it? The coronation, yes. What's the name of the place? Moscow,
yes."

The druggist is less confused.

"Wouldn't it be funny if the czar wasn't dead. But say, pardner, what
would you say if I went over there and told my widow I didn't believe
her old man was dead at all? Would she give me the gaff? Would she
git ma