"That's two hundred and a quarter you cleaned up on that deal--eh?" he grinned, as he folded the ten-spot about eight times and thrust it into an empty tobacco sack. "Ha-ha-ha!" he gurgled. "Pretty good! Pretty good! How would it be if we went along to the Queen's and had one on the green Englishmen?" This rather clever suggestion appeared to meet with the tall, dark stoic's silent but sincere approval, for immediately they both walked out of the barn as though to carry it into effect. "What's that silly ass intend to do about his wagon and harness, I wonder?" demanded Bert of his little partner, a few minutes after the vendor's departure. "Surely he doesn't expect us to take care of them for him. Run across and ask him what we're to do with them. Sam!" Rightly or wrongly, Sam had all his life been trained to regard the striving after excessive purism in business as an infallible sign of approaching idiocy. "Say nothink wotever abaht 'em. If 'e don't worry arter 'em 'isself, why should we? Come on, let's slip orf before 'e begins ter think abaht rememberin' 'e's forgot 'em." Bert almost blushed at the dishonourable proposal. But he was much too sensitively constructed to appear ultra-virtuous, so he silently acquiesced. With a little instruction, and less assistance, from two or three interested onlookers, they hitched the horses to the wagon and drove off to purchase a schooner-top. Something must have propitiated Fate. The horses went along all right. Though being almost old enough to vote, they were perfectly honest. CHAPTER IV _Saskatoon--Buying Machinery_ Bert's parents had always been secretly proud of their son as a correspondent. Faithfully he wrote to them from M---- Grammar School once or twice each year. But, later on, whilst articled to an immensely wealthy firm of lawyers at Sheffield, he had communicated with his father much more frequently. Always his requests were granted. Money requests they were chiefly--for Sir Felix Hamingway, great nonconformist, lawyer, magistrate, knight, Chairman of Directors of Tipsey's Pale Ales, Limited, generous giver to both Home and Foreign Missions, and Bert's employer, had made it a fixed rule never to pay his first-year articled clerks more than fifteen shillings and sixpence weekly. His mental excuse for being so profligate in the matter of salaries was that his minister's ebony-skinned, woolly-headed protégés residing along the banks of the Zambezi were such a drain on his limited purse. Therefore, being so accustomed to letter writing, it was second nature for Bert to send home a message from Saskatoon. In the evening of the exciting day distinguished by the purchase of a team, he scribbled a missive to his mother, by candle-light. Its contents went something like this: