Peacock stocks MIGHT come
up!"

I looked into his face: it was immeasurably serene and commonplace. I
began to be a little afraid of the man, or, rather, of my want of
judgment of the man; and after a few words we shook hands and parted.

It was some months before I again saw the Man from Solano. When I did,
I found that he had actually become a member of the Stock Board, and
had a little office on Broad Street, where he transacted a fair
business. My remembrance going back to the first night I met him, I
inquired if he had renewed his acquaintance with Miss X. "I heerd that
she was in Newport this summer, and I ran down there fur a week."

"And you talked with her about the baggage-checks?"

"No," he said, seriously; "she gave me a commission to buy some stocks
for her. You see, I guess them fash'nable fellers sorter got to
runnin' her about me, and so she put our acquaintance on a square
business footing. I tell you, she's a right peart gal. Did ye hear of
the accident that happened to her?"

I had not.

"Well, you see, she was out yachting, and I managed through one of
those fellers to get an invite, too. The whole thing was got up by a
man that they say is going to marry her. Well, one afternoon the boom
swings round in a little squall and knocks her overboard. There was an
awful excitement,--you've heard about it, may be?"

"No!" But I saw it all with a romancer's instinct in a flash of
poetry! This poor fellow, debarred through uncouthness from expressing
his affection for her, had at last found his fitting opportunity. He
had--

"Thar was an awful row," he went on. "I ran out on the taffrail, and
there a dozen yards away was that purty creature, that peart gal,
and--I--"

"You jumped for her," I said, hastily.

"No!" he said gravely. "I let the other man do the jumping. I sorter
looked on."

I stared at him in astonishment.

"No," he went on, seriously. "He was the man who jumped--that was just
then his 'put'--his line of business. You see, if I had waltzed over
the side of that ship, and cavoorted in, and flummuxed round and
finally flopped to the bottom, that other man would have jumped
nateral-like and saved her; and ez he was going to marry her anyway, I
don't exactly see where I'D hev been represented in the transaction.
But don't you see, ef, after he'd jumped and hadn't got her, he'd gone
down himself, I'd hev had the next best chance, and the advantage of
heving him outer