“You bet you!” says Mark. “Well, I swan!” says Silas. “If that hain’t the beat of anythin’.” “I read somewheres,” says Mark, “that it’s the concern that makes money out of what other concerns wastes that gits ahead. Maybe, Mr. Bugg, you’d ’a’ made more money with this mill if you’d ’a’ watched out for the little things. Why, I know a mill that burns its sawdust and slabs for fuel, not havin’ water-power, but they don’t waste their ashes. No, sir. Them wood ashes is good for fertilizer, and they sell every spoonful of ’em for a quarter or more a bushel. Paid the engineer’s wages with ashes. That’s how to git ahead in the manufacturin’ b-b-business.” “I swan!” says Silas again, and sat there waggling his head and looking at Mark like Mark was some kind of a five-legged elephant with pink ears. “I swan!” he says, after a minute, and then he got up and walked out, still waggling his head like a dog with a bee in its ear. “Anyhow,” says I, “we hain’t got any more slabs to sell.” “Correct,” says Mark. “Guess I’ll look over Silas’s bookkeepin’.” He went over to the pile of board ends that Silas had used to figger on, and began studying ’em careful. “I wisht,” says he, “that Silas was able to make head or tail to these. I’ll bet there’s quite consid’able money owin’ to this mill.” “What you goin’ to do about it?” says I. “I’m goin’ to set down all the n-n-names I kin find here, and the amounts, and try to collect ’em all. Them that’s paid won’t pay ag’in, but them that hain’t paid will mostly be willin’ to, I expect.... Silas Doolittle was what you might call a slap-up man of business.” CHAPTER IV “What we got to do,” says Mark, next morning, “is to get a l-little money ahead so we won’t have to be b-bustin’ ourselves every day to p-pay the men. If we only had two-three hunderd d-dollars it ’u’d give us time to start in to run this mill.” “If I had it,” says I, “I’d lend it to us.” “There must be some m-m-money owin’ to Silas,” says Mark. “Let’s ask him.” Silas Doolittle Bugg was just sort of roaming around, keeping an eye on things and waggling his head. He didn’t seem to be bossing anything, but just strolling around to see the sights. He’d stop and look at the men in the log-yard a minute, and scratch his head and waggle it as much as to say, “Well, if that hain’t the beatinest thing I ever see!” like he was astonished ’most to death, you know, when he had been seeing that selfsame sight almost every day of his life. Then he would mogg into the mill and stand alongside the saw for a spell and talk to himself and act as if a saw cutting through a log was a miracle right out of the Bible. I never saw a man that could get up so much surprise over something that didn’t surprise him a bit. He was always surprised. I’ll bet it surprised him when he woke up in the morning. Mark and I went over to him, and Mark says: