It seemed he had put
the matter to his friend at once, and that Carthew had taken to it with
an inimitable lightness. "He's poor and I'm rich," he had said. "I can
afford to smile at him. I go somewhere else, that's all--somewhere
that's far away and dear to get to. Persia would be found to answer, I
fancy. No end of a place, Persia. Why not come with me?" And they had
left the next afternoon for Constantinople, on their way to Teheran. Of
the shyster, it is only known (by a newspaper paragraph) that he
returned somehow to San Francisco and died in the hospital.

"Now there's another point," said I. "There you are off to Persia with a
millionaire, and rich yourself. How come you here in the South Seas,
running a trader?"

He said, with a smile, that I had not yet heard of Jim's last
bankruptcy. "I was about cleaned out once more," he said; "and then it
was that Carthew had this schooner built and put me in as supercargo.
It's his yacht and it's my trader; and as nearly all the expenses go to
the yacht, I do pretty well. As for Jim, he's right again; one of the
best businesses, they say, in the West--fruit, cereals, and real estate;
and he has a Tartar of a partner now--Nares, no less. Nares will keep
him straight, Nares has a big head. They have their country places next
door at Saucelito, and I stayed with them time about, the last time I
was on the coast. Jim had a paper of his own--I think he has a notion of
being senator one of these days--and he wanted me to throw up the
schooner and come and write his editorials. He holds strong views on the
State Constitution, and so does Mamie."

"And what became of the other three Currency Lasses after they left
Carthew?" I inquired.

"Well, it seems they had a huge spree in the city of Mexico," said Dodd;
"and then Hadden and the Irishman took a turn at the gold-fields in
Venezuela, and Wicks went on alone to Valparaiso. There's a Kirkup in
the Chilean navy to this day; I saw the name in the papers about the
Balmaceda war. Hadden soon wearied of the mines, and I met him the other
day in Sydney. The last news he had from Venezuela, Mac had been knocked
over in an attack on the gold train. So there's only the three of them
left, for Amalu scarcely counts. He lives on his own land in Maui, at
the side of Hale-a-ka-la, where he keeps Goddedaal's canary; and they
say he sticks to his dollars, which is a wonder in a Kanaka. He had a
considerable pile to start with, for not only