ibe them
better. Tom done it. At last, when Tom was describing one of the
roughest and raggedest ones, he gave a shiver and a gasp and says:

"Oh, lordy, that's one of them! They're aboard sure--I just knowed it. I
sort of hoped I had got away, but I never believed it. Go on."

Presently when Tom was describing another mangy, rough deck passenger,
he give that shiver again and says:

"That's him!--that's the other one. If it would only come a good black
stormy night and I could get ashore. You see, they've got spies on me.
They've got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar yonder forrard,
and they take that chance to bribe somebody to keep watch on me--porter
or boots or somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody seeing me,
they would know it inside of an hour."

So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon, sure enough, he was
telling! He was poking along through his ups and downs, and when he come
to that place he went right along. He says:

"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-shop in St.
Louis. What we was after was a couple of noble big di'monds as big as
hazel-nuts, which everybody was running to see. We was dressed up fine,
and we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered the di'monds
sent to the hotel for us to see if we wanted to buy, and when we was
examining them we had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the
things that went back to the shop when we said the water wasn't quite
fine enough for twelve thousand dollars."

"Twelve-thousand-dollars!" Tom says. "Was they really worth all that
money, do you reckon?"

"Every cent of it."

"And you fellows got away with them?"

"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery people know they've been
robbed yet. But it wouldn't be good sense to stay around St. Louis, of
course, so we considered where we'd go. One was for going one way, one
another, so we throwed up, heads or tails, and the Upper Mississippi
won. We done up the di'monds in a paper and put our names on it and put
it in the keep of the hotel clerk, and told him not to ever let either
of us have it again without the others was on hand to see it done; then
we went down town, each by his own self--because I reckon maybe we all
had the same notion. I don't know for certain, but I reckon maybe we
had."

"What notion?" Tom says.

"To rob the others."

"What--one take everything, after all of you had helped to get it?"

"Cert'nly."

It disgusted T