e so many dazzling openings for ready cash that they found it
impossible to make up their minds and keep them made up. Finally, Mrs.
Sellers grew very weary of it all, and said:

"What is the sense in cooking a rabbit before it's caught?"

Then the matter was dropped, for the time being, and all went to bed.
Next morning, being persuaded by Hawkins, the colonel made drawings and
specifications and went down and applied for a patent for his toy puzzle,
and Hawkins took the toy itself and started out to see what chance there
might be to do something with it commercially. He did not have to go
far. In a small old wooden shanty which had once been occupied as a
dwelling by some humble negro family he found a keen-eyed Yankee engaged
in repairing cheap chairs and other second-hand furniture. This man
examined the toy indifferently; attempted to do the puzzle; found it not
so easy as he had expected; grew more interested, and finally
emphatically so; achieved a success at last, and asked:

"Is it patented?"

"Patent applied for."

"That will answer. What do you want for it?"

"What will it retail for?"

"Well, twenty-five cents, I should think."

"What will you give for the exclusive right?"

"I couldn't give twenty dollars, if I had to pay cash down; but I'll tell
you what I'll do. I'll make it and market it, and pay you five cents
royalty on each one."

Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing.
So he said:

"All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper." He went his way with the
paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room
for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his
half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both
beneficiaries could not be hit upon.

He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief
and booming with glad excitement--working both these emotions
successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on
Hawkins's neck sobbing, and said:

"Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has
smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore--congratulate me!"

He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his
arms about her and said--"You will bear up, for my sake, my lady--it had
to happen, it was decreed."

She bore up very well, and said:

"It's no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless