nds
upon a rake.

"You get out o' there, you ole horse, you!" he bellowed. "I ain't
afraid to drive him out. I----"

"_Wait_ a minute!" shouted Penrod. "Wait till I----"

Sam was manfully preparing to enter the stall.

"You hold the doors open," he commanded, "so's they won't blow shut and
keep him in here. I'm goin' to hit him with----"

"Quee-_yut_!" Penrod shouted, grasping the handle of the rake so that
Sam could not use it. "Wait a _minute_, can't you?" He turned with
ferocious voice and gestures upon Duke. "_Duke!_" And Duke, in spite of
his excitement, was so impressed that he prostrated himself in silence,
and then unobtrusively withdrew from the stable. Penrod ran to the
alley doors and closed them.

"My gracious!" Sam protested. "What you goin' to do?"

"I'm goin' to keep this horse," said Penrod, whose face showed the
strain of a great idea.

"What _for_?"

"For the reward," said Penrod simply.

Sam sat down in the wheelbarrow and stared at his friend almost with
awe.

"My gracious," he said, "I never thought o' that! How--how much do you
think we'll get, Penrod?"

Sam's thus admitting himself to a full partnership in the enterprise
met no objection from Penrod, who was absorbed in the contemplation of
Whitey.

"Well," he said judicially, "we might get more and we might get less."

Sam rose and joined his friend in the doorway opening upon the two
stalls. Whitey had preempted the nearer, and was hungrily nuzzling the
old frayed hollows in the manger.

"May be a hundred dollars--or sumpthing?" Sam asked in a low voice.

Penrod maintained his composure and repeated the new-found expression
which had sounded well to him a moment before. He recognized it as a
symbol of the non-committal attitude that makes people looked up to.
"Well"--he made it slow, and frowned--"we might get more and we might
get less."

"More'n a hundred _dollars_?" Sam gasped.

"Well," said Penrod, "we might get more and we might get less." This
time, however, he felt the need of adding something. He put a question
in an indulgent tone, as though he were inquiring, not to add to his
own information but to discover the extent of Sam's. "How much do you
think horses are worth, anyway?"

"I don't know," said Sam frankly, and, unconsciously, he added, "They
might be more and they might be less."

"Well, when our ole horse died," said Penrod, "papa said he wouldn't
taken five hundred dollars for him. That's how much _h