As I have intimated, I didn't care to have that episode dragged out before the truck-driver, who might have passed it right on to Pete Holt and Editor Phillips. So I just sat tight for the moment, thanked Joe for his warnings and drove on when he got out of breath. But late that afternoon I went to his shop and made a clean breast of everything. I confessed about the moss agate, and also to the fact that I was the youth who held the steering paddle for Sydney Lamartine the time the still unbroken river record of six hours to Big Timber was put up. Then we both grinned, shook hands and apologized to each other. I apologized to Joe for seeming to have aided and abetted "Lefty" in trying to get away with the moss agate, and Joe apologized to me for that warning about the Yellowstone. There was a delicate and subtle compliment in his handsome admission that he felt that his was the greater wrong, even allowing for the fact that there were still two or three moss agates missing when he finally checked over the tray. In this latter connection, Joe said that for a year or two he had the feeling that he had made a tactical error in not turning out my pockets as well as "Lefty's" when he made his search. Then, one day, "Lefty" came in and sold him back the agates. "I didn't say anything," said Joe with a chuckle. "Just paid him a dollar apiece for the streakies, and then turned about and sold him for ten dollars an old Colt's that had laid under the snow all winter and wasn't worth six-bits. It seemed to me the kinder way," he concluded. Of course a man of so mellow and inclusive a charity as that was easy for me to become fond of. Joe and I made friends quickly, and he fell in very readily with the plan to go along in his canvas boat when I started and help Pete Holt look for the two floaters.