"Sure, Mike!" said the stranger. "And one of the finest youse ever seen. Looks like youse could walk right into it and pick hickory nuts off them oak trees, don't it? It's one of me old friends." Philo Gubb took another bite of sandwich and masticated it slowly. "Let me teach youse something," said the stranger, and he took a roll of the tapestry paper in his hand and unrolled a few feet. He pointed to the margin of the printed side of the paper with his oily forefinger. "Do youse see them printings?" he asked. "Says 7462 B J, don't it?" "It does," mumbled Philo Gubb. "Well, say! This here wall-paper feller Dietz--he makes this here paper, don't he? And that there 7462 is the number of this here forest tap. pattern, see? And B J--that's Bessie John--that tells youse what the coloring is, see? Bessie John is the regular nature coloring, see? They got one with pink trees and yeller sky, for bood-u-wars and bedrooms. That's M S--Mary Sam." "It is a very ingenious way to proceed to do," said Philo Gubb, "and if regular union wages is all right you can take that straight-edge and trim all them Bessie John letters off this bundle of 7462 Bessie John I'm sitting onto." This was satisfactory to the stranger. He removed his greasy coat, threw his greasy cap into a corner, wiped his greasy hands on a wad of trimmings and set to work. When Mr. Gubb had completed his modest luncheon he asked his name. "Youse might as well call me Greasy," said the new employee. "I'm greasier than anything. Got it off'n my motor-boat." During the afternoon Philo Gubb learned something of his assistant's immediate past. "Greasy" had saved some money, working at St. Paul, and had bought a motor-boat--"Some boat!" he said; "Streak o' Lightnin' was what I named her, and she was"--and he had come down the Mississippi. "She can beat anything on the Dad," he said. The "Dad" was his disrespectful paraphrase of "The Father of Waters," the title of the giant Mississippi. He told of his adventures until he mentioned the Silver Sides. Then he swore in a manner that suited his piratical countenance exactly. He had been floating peacefully down the river with the current, his power shut off and himself asleep in the bottom of the boat, doing no harm to any one, when along came the Silver Sides, and without giving him a warning signal, ran him down. "Done it a-purpose, too," he said angrily. He had managed to keep the boat afloat until he reached Riverbank, but to fix her up would take more money than he had. So he had hunted a job in his own line, and found Philo Gubb.