yourself, but what you tell me comes like soft rain over a dry prairie,
and changing the parched soil into something that seems to say, 'I 'm
not so barren, after all, if I only got my turn from fortune.' You 've
shown me one thing, that I often had a glimmerin' of, but never saw
clearly till you pointed it out, that the wisest men that ever lived
felt more distrust of themselves than of their fellows. But we only part
for a while, Layton. In less than a month we 'll meet again, and I hope
to have good news for you by that time."

"Where are we to rendezvous, then?" asked Layton, for he saw how
fruitless would be the attempt at further opposition.

"I'll have the map out this evening, and we 'll fix it," said the
Colonel. "And now leave me to smoke, and think over what's afore us.
There's great thoughts in that bit of twisted 'bacco there, if I only
have the wit to trace 'em. Every man that has had to use his head
in life finds out by the time he's forty what helps him to his best
notions. Bonaparte used to get into a bath to think, Arkwright went to
bed, and my father, Methuselah Grip Quackinboss, said he never was so
bright as standing up to his neck in the mill-race, with the light spray
of the wheel comin' in showers over him. 'I feel,' says he, 'as if I
was one-half Lord Bacon and the other John C. Colhoun.' Now my
brain-polisher is a long Cuban, a shady tree, and a look-out
seaward,--all the better if the only sails in sight be far away."

CHAPTER XLII. A NEW LOCATION

After a great deal of discussion it was agreed between Layton and the
Colonel that they should meet that day month at St. Louis. Layton was to
employ the interval in seeing as much as he could of the country and
the people, and preparing himself to appear before them at the first
favorable opportunity. Indeed, though he did not confess it, he yielded
to the separation the more willingly, because it offered him the
occasion of putting into execution a plan he for some time had been
ruminating over. In some measure from a natural diffidence, and in a
great degree from a morbid dread of disappointing the high expectations
Quackinboss had formed of the success he was to obtain, Layton had long
felt that the presence of his friend would be almost certain to insure
his failure. He could neither venture to essay the same flights before
him, nor could he, if need were, support any coldness or disinclination
of his audience were Quackinboss there to