son was
over, and I anticipated no trouble in finding one.

By this time there was quite a crowd collected in the saloon, and for
half an hour longer the robbery was talked over. Nothing new was
brought out. Buckner had taken the package from the counter, Nick had
pursued him, and the money was not found. They could not get beyond
these facts, or beyond these apparent facts, for things are not always
as they seem.

Peverell left when he found he could get no further in his
investigation, and then for a time there was a lively business done at
both bars of the saloon. The negroes had come into the front room to
hear what was said, and they could not leave till each of them had
imbibed all the cheap whiskey he could get into one of Captain
Boomsby's thick-bottomed tumblers. Nick was just as busy at the front
bar. I could not help looking at him as he dealt out the dangerous
fluids--doubly dangerous after passing through Captain Boomsby's hands.
I doubted whether he had any ambition to become anything better than a
bartender. He was about my age, but not half so robust, for, being an
only son, his father and mother humored him, and never compelled him to
do anything like hard work, as they had me.

Nick was dressed in rather cheap, but flashy, clothes, and wore an
enormous glass diamond in his shirt front. At the present time he
seemed to be doing his dirty work in a very mechanical manner, as
though he were thinking of something else. He had to ask every customer
twice over what he wanted, and even then gave him the wrong bottle.

But the rush of business was soon over. Captain Boomsby came out of the
negro bar, and Nick joined him in the rear of the front saloon. The
father looked at the son, and the son looked at the father, and then
both of them looked at me, as though they did not care to say anything
in my presence.

"I suppose I shall have to go to court, father," said Nick, "and I
guess I had better go up stairs and slick up a little."

"You look well enough as you be," replied the elder Boomsby.

"If I am going into the court, I want my best clothes on. Besides,
father, you said I might go out this afternoon," replied Nick, who
evidently had other views in his head than the court. "Mother had just
as lief tend bar this afternoon as not."

"I s'pose she had, but I don't want her in the bar when I can help it,"
added the captain, whose marital relations had become decidedly
unpleasant, as I had learned fro