Well, Silas Doolittle wouldn’t believe it till Mark showed him the papers, and then took him to a lawyer that told him they were real, and then you ought to have seen him. Happy? Why, you never saw anything like it in your life! He ’most danced a jig. He couldn’t say anything for a spell, and then he let out a sort of holler and ran down into the street and started telling everybody he met. In about an hour everybody in Wicksville knew it, and knew how Mark Tidd did it, and you’d better believe that Mark Tidd was considerable of a big person in that town then and there. Everybody wanted to talk to him and ask him about it. But he didn’t grab all the glory. No, sir. He wasn’t that kind of a fellow. He insisted us three fellows had as much to do with it as he did, so we got some praise, too; but we knew, and everybody else knew, that it was Mark Tidd and nobody else. I know I was suited to have it that way. That night when we parted to go to bed I says to Mark, “I guess this is about the biggest thing you ever done, and I don’t see how you done it.” “I do,” says he. “It was all h-havin’ fellers to help me that would s-s-stick right to it till we got there. We done it b-because we played fair and was right—and b-because we didn’t lay down on the job.” “Maybe so,” says I, “but brains come into it somewhere, and you’re the only one of us that seems like he’s got any.” “Fiddlesticks!” says Mark. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mark Tidd, Manufacturer, by Clarence Budington Kelland