“All right,” said the boy, trying to hold back his laughter, “you’d better keep that cane handy, because we’ll be back.” And he closed the door quietly in the face of the sputtering clerk. When they reached the street once more, Abe looked at Tad with a droll expression and shook his head. “I can’t rightly blame the feller,” he chuckled. “I never thought how we were goin’ to look, an’ you wouldn’t be taken fer any swell Easterner, ye know.” Tad glanced down at his costume. It was the first time he had even thought about his appearance for weeks. And as he realized how he must have looked to the dapperly attired young underling in his father’s office, he burst into another shout of merriment. His shirt was in rags, with one sleeve torn out entirely at the shoulder. The butternut breeches of Abe’s purchase had stood up better under hard service, but even they were tattered in several places, and very dirty. His bare feet and legs still showed the marks of the many scrapes and scratches he had got in his adventure with the outlaws. And he knew that his skin, tanned to the color of an Indian’s, and his uncombed thatch of hair, must give him anything but a prepossessing appearance. “I reckon what ye really need,” said Abe, “is a bran’ new suit o’ store clothes, an’ a hair-cut. Then maybe some stockin’s an’ shoes an’ a necktie might help. ’Bout twelve dollars an’ a half in gov’ment notes, an’ you’d be the real Tad Hopkins ag’in, ’stead o’ jest a plain, ornery little river-rat. The only question now is, whar are we a-goin’ to git that much cash? Speakin’ fer myself, jest at the present moment I haven’t got even one lonesome cent. Looks like I’d have to break my promise an’ take ye back to eat aboard the boat ag’in.” They wandered through the hot streets, picturesque but smelly, and came at length to the levee market, where long rows of booths under brightly striped canopies displayed eatables of every sort. There were rice and green corn, ginger, all kinds of berries, oranges and bananas, live fowls tied in threes and hanging by their legs, quail and other game, fish and shrimps from the Gulf, and craw-fish, sold by wrinkled old Choctaw Indian women. At some of the stalls mulattoes held up chocolate in big steaming cups, and from others came the delicious odor of hot rice and gumbo. “Hm,” said Abe, “’twon’t do to hang ’round here very long. I’m commencin’ to git mighty hungry.” They threaded their way through the crowds of Creole housewives with their black servants carrying market baskets, and emerged in front of a long warehouse opening on the levee near the steamboat landing. Before this warehouse stood a two-horse dray, partly loaded with barrels and boxes, and around it were three negroes apparently waiting for something. A well-dressed, elderly white man fumed up and down meanwhile, and expressed his opinion of the colored race in no uncertain terms. As Tad and Abe drew near, he addressed his remarks to them.