k eggs, I'll pack 'em up nice and warm in
cotton, and send 'em down to you, and have 'em hatched. That's where
your farm'll come in. You've got to have a farm and turkeys or big hens
if you want to raise auks. Then I'll go on lookin', and, most likely,
I'll get a couple more.'

"'That'll be a good thing,' said Abner; 'the more the merrier. I'll go
in with you, Joe Pearson. That's the sort of business that'll just suit
me. But I'll tell you one thing, Joe: I wouldn't put the price of them
eggs down at first; I'd wait until a couple of dozen had been laid and
blowed, and then, perhaps, I'd put the price down.'

"'No, sir,' said Joe; 'I'll put the price down at the very beginning.
Sixteen hundred dollars, or three thousand for two, is enough for any
eggs, and we oughter be satisfied with it.'

"'And when are you goin' to start north?' asked Abner.

"'That's the p'int,' said Pearson, 'that's the p'int. You see, Abner, I
ain't got no family, and I can start north whenever I please, as far as
that's concerned. But there's obstacles. For one thing, I ain't got the
right kind of clothes; and then there's other things. It's awful hard
lines startin' out on a business like this, and the more money there is
in it the harder the lines.'

"'But you can do it, Joe,' said Abner. 'I feel in my bones you can do
it. It'll be blackgum ag'in' thunder, but you'll be blackgum, and you'll
come out all right.'

"'I can't be blackgum nor nothin' else,' said Pearson, 'if I don't get
no help; specially if I don't get no help from the party what's goin' to
get a lot of the money.'

"Abner reflected. 'If we was to set any auk eggs next month, it'll be
well on into next summer before we'd have eggs to sell.'

"Pearson also reflected. 'Yes,' he said; 'and it might be a little later
than that. You've got to leave a margin. I allus leave a margin. Then
I'm safe.'

"'Yes,' said Abner; 'then you're safe.'

"Joe Pearson was a man of resourceful discretion. He rose now. 'Abner,'
said he, 'I've got to go; I've got a lot of things on my hands. And I
want you to remember that what I've said to you I said to you, and I
wouldn't have no other man know nothin' about it. If anybody else should
hear of this thing, and go north, and get ahead of me, it would
be--well, I don't know what to say it would be, I've such feelin's about
it. I've offered to take you in because you've got a farm, and because I
think you're a good man, and would know how to take