“Sorry I give you the t-t-trouble of walkin’ down here for nothin’,” says Mark, and he turned away and came toward the mill. “Hey, there!” yelled Jim. “Don’t be in sich a doggone rush. What you askin’?” Mark came back. “You guess there’s f-f-fifteen cord there?” “Uh-huh.” “I’m figgerin’ there’s more. Now, Mr. Root, I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll call it f-f-fifteen cord and let you have the lot for two dollars, sawed and split and delivered in your yard—but there’s a condition. Cash in advance to-morrow m-m-mornin’. That’ll give you a p-p-profit of fifty cents to a dollar a cord, which is perty good, hain’t it? And I’ll contract to d-deliver all the slabs we cut at the price so’s you’ll have control of all our wood. It’ll keep me off the market.” “Tell you what I’ll do,” says Jim. “I’ll give you twenty-five for that pile delivered like you say—cash in advance.” “Nope,” says Mark, “thirty or n-nothin’.” “Nothin’, then,” says Jim. “All right,” says Mark. “Good-by.” He walked off again, and so did Jim Root, but before Jim got to the road he turned and came back, and he was pulling a wallet out of his back pocket. “Hey!” says he, “here’s your thirty!” “Much obliged,” says Mark, and he turned around and winked at me. “You want to be down-town Saturday night, Mr. Root. Plunk here is goin’ to t-t-try to amuse the folks for an hour or so. I figger he’ll be all-fired funny to watch.” “When it comes to a dicker,” says Jim, “I take off my hat to you.... You’ll start to deliverin’ to-morrow?” “First thing,” says Mark. We went up-stairs, and I can tell you I felt pretty foolish. I could see me traipsing around town Saturday night, with the band playing in the square, with my sister’s doll and cab, and I could come pretty close to seeing every kid in town tagging after me, making a bunch of remarks that wouldn’t do me no good to hear. I could have kicked myself in the stummick if I could have reached it with my toe. But it all did some good, I expect. It learned me a lesson, and that was not to go making bets with Mark Tidd. I might have knowed he had something ready to shoot off, and he wasn’t the kind of feller to take any chances on being made a fool of in public. “I don’t calc’late,” says he, after a while, “that you got to worry your b-b-brain makin’ up somethin’ smart to put on that card, Plunk.” “Looks that way,” I says, as short as I could. Mark went over to Silas Doolittle, who was still sitting on the saw-carriage, and showed the roll of bills to him. “You can t-t-tell your men we’ll pay off prompt to-morrow night,” he says. “But how about day after to-morrow?” says I. “We got t-ten dollars toward that, hain’t we?” “Looks so,” says I. “And we’ll git the rest,” says he. “I hain’t makin’ any bets,” says I, and he grinned. “How’d you git that money?” says Silas Doolittle. “Slabs,” says Mark. “What slabs?” “Down in the yard. The ones you been l-l-lettin’ the flood carry off.” “You got _money_ for ’em?”