“And if it did--what o’ that? You ain’t ashamed of it, are you? Look at me, Sir; I have a matter of seventy thousand dollars in the Tennessee Bank, and a trifle more in Ohio scrip, and I own every timber in the barque _Prettyman Quincey Squashy_ four hundred and odd tons, a clipper to sail, and a whale for freight, and I ain’t proud, nor no ways blown up to burstin’ for that!” “I am delighted to know of your prosperity, Sir, for your sake,” said Luttrell, coldly. “Mind,” said the other, who accepted the words in their most flattering sense, “I didn’t say it was all got with my hands in my ‘pants-’ pockets. I had a darn’d deal of smart work for it. I was up among the Injians for four years, I was over the Rocky Mountains trappin’, I was a cook aboard a South Sea whaler, and”--here he winked one eye, and gave Luttrell a good-humoured poke with his finger--“and I did a little in Ebony off the Samsoo River, you understand; unwholesome work it was, with the baracoons always flooded, and the alligators flopping through the mud, and stirring up foul air and fever. Ugh!” he cried, with a wry face, “you’d see an ugly sort of a blotch on your cheek at night, and before the same hour next evening the ground sharks would be a fitin’ over you. You haven’t got anything to drink, have you?” “I can, unfortunately, offer you nothing but our mountain whisky; it is home-made, however, and not bad.” While Luttrell took a bottle and some glasses from a small cupboard in the wall, Mr. Dodge employed himself in a leisurely examination of the chamber and its furniture. “May I never!” exclaimed he, “if it ain’t a droll sort of crib. Why, Stranger, I’d not live here three months without making something better to sit on, and handier to eat off, than these. Just you give me a hatchet, and a hammer, and a handful of nails, to-morrow morning early, and see if I won’t.” “I am afraid my furniture deserves all the ill you can say of it,” said Luttrell, with a faint smile. “That ain’t a chair--it’s not like a chair.” “I will not defend it, certainly.” “And yet it shows why you Britishers never can, by any possibility, be a great people--no, Sir, never.” “I am really curious to hear that explanation.”