heard him. Pretty soon he says:

"Five dollars--sho! Look here, this sand's worth--worth--why, it's worth
no end of money."

"How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!"

"Well, the minute people knows it's genuwyne sand from the genuwyne
Desert of Sahara, they'll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold
of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a
curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all
over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We've got
all of ten thousand dollars' worth of sand in this boat."

Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout
whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says:

"And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and
fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we've carted this whole
Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain't ever going to be any
opposition, either, because we'll take out a patent."

"My goodness," I says, "we'll be as rich as Creosote, won't we, Tom?"

"Yes--Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little
hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn't know he was walking over
the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the
driver."

"Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?"

"Well, I don't know yet. It's got to be ciphered, and it ain't the
easiest job to do, either, because it's over four million square miles of
sand at ten cents a vial."

Jim was awful excited, but this faded it out considerable, and he shook
his head and says:

"Mars Tom, we can't 'ford all dem vials--a king couldn't. We better not
try to take de whole Desert, Mars Tom, de vials gwyne to bust us, sho'."

Tom's excitement died out, too, now, and I reckoned it was on account of
the vials, but it wasn't. He set there thinking, and got bluer and bluer,
and at last he says:

"Boys, it won't work; we got to give it up."

"Why, Tom?"

"On account of the duties."

I couldn't make nothing out of that, neither could Jim. I says:

"What IS our duty, Tom? Because if we can't git around it, why can't we
just DO it? People often has to."

But he says:

"Oh, it ain't that kind of duty. The kind I mean is a tax. Whenever you
strike a frontier--that's the border of a country, you know--you find a
custom-house there, and the gov'ment officers comes and rummages among
your things and charges a big tax, which they call a duty because it's
their d