ying it was all luck, Abe, because it
wasn't. If you hadn't seen the opportunity, Abe, and practically made me
go into it, I wouldn't of done nothing, Abe."

Abe nodded again. If the guilt he felt inwardly had expressed itself in
his face there would have been no need of confession. At length he
braced himself to tell it all; but just as he cleared his throat by way
of prelude Morris was summoned to the cutting-room and remained there
until closing-time. Thus, when Abe went home his secret remained locked
up within his breast, nor did he find it a comfortable burden, for when
he looked at the quotations of curb securities in the evening paper he
found that Interstate Copper had closed at four and a half, after a
total day's business of sixty thousand shares.

The next morning Abe reached his store more than two hours after his
usual hour. He had rolled on his pillow all night, and it was almost day
before he could sleep.

"Why, Abe," Morris cried when he saw him, "you look sick. What's the
matter?"

"I feel mean, Mawruss," Abe replied. "I guess I eat something what
disagrees with me."

Ordinarily, Morris would have made rejoinder to the effect that when a
man reached Abe's age he ought to know enough to take care of his
stomach; but Morris had devoted himself to the financial column of a
morning newspaper on his way downtown, and his feelings toward his
partner were mollified in proportion.

"That's too bad, Abe," he said. "Why don't you see a doctor?"

Abe shook his head and was about to reply when the telephone bell rang.

"That's Sol Klinger," Morris exclaimed. "He said he would let me know at
ten o'clock what this Interstate Copper opened at."

He darted for the telephone in the rear of the store, and when he
returned his face was wreathed in smiles.

"It has come up to five already," he cried. "We make it twenty-five
hundred dollars."

While Morris was talking over the 'phone Abe had been trying to bring
his courage to the sticking point, and the confession was on the very
tip of his tongue when the news which Morris brought forced it back
again. He rose wearily to his feet.

"I guess you think we're getting rich quick, Mawruss," he said, and
repaired to the bookkeeper's desk in the firm's private office. For the
next two hours and a half he dodged about, with one eye on Morris and
the other on the rear entrance to the store. He expected the silk to
arrive at any moment, and he knew that when it did