displaying
the smallest astonishment or the slightest sympathy, Mat stood gravely
listening until Zack had quite done. He then went to the corner of the
room where the round table was; pulled the upturned lid back upon the
pedestal; drew from the breast pocket of his coat a roll of beaver-skin;
slowly undid it; displayed upon the table a goodly collection of bank
notes; and pointing to them, said to young Thorpe,--"Take what you
want."

It was not easy to surprise Zack; but this proceeding so completely
astonished him, that he stared at the bank notes in speechless
amazement. Mat took his pipe from a nail in the wall, filled the bowl
with tobacco, and pointing with the stem towards the table, gruffly
repeated,--"Take what you want."

This time, Zack found words in which to express himself, and used them
pretty freely to praise his new friend's unexampled generosity, and to
decline taking a single farthing. Mat deliberately lit his pipe, in the
first place, and then bluntly answered in these terms:--

"Take my advice, young 'un, and keep all that talking for somebody else:
it's gibberish to _me._ Don't bother; and help yourself to what you
want. Money's what you want--though you won't own it. That's money. When
it's gone, I can go back to California and get more. While it lasts,
make it spin. What is there to stare at? I told you I'd be brothers with
you, because of what you done for me the other night. Well: I'm being
brothers with you now. Get your watch out of pawn, and shake a loose leg
at the world. _Will_ you take what you want? And when you have, just tie
up the rest, and chuck 'em over here." With those words the man of
the black skull-cap sat down on his bearskins, and sulkily surrounded
himself with clouds of tobacco smoke.

Finding it impossible to make Mat understand those delicacies and
refinements of civilized life which induce one gentleman (always
excepting a clergyman at Easter time) to decline accepting money from
another gentleman as a gift--perceiving that he was resolved to receive
all remonstrances as so many declarations of personal enmity and
distrust--and well knowing, moreover, that a little money to go on
with would be really a very acceptable accommodation under existing
circumstances, Zack consented to take two ten-pound notes as a loan. At
this reservation Mat chuckled contemptuously; but young Thorpe
enforced it, by tearing a leaf out of his pocket-book, and writing an
acknowledgment f