“Never touch it,” said Mr. Tenney, and he looked curiously on while Horace poured out some brandy, and then opened a bottle of soda-water to go with it. He was particularly impressed by the little wire frame-work stand made to hold the round-bottomed bottle, and asked its cost, and wondered if they wouldn’t be a good thing to keep in the store. “Now to business!” said Horace, dragging out from under a sofa the black tin box which held the Minster papers, and throwing back its cover. “I’ve told you pretty well what there is in here.” Mr. Tenney took from his pocket-book the tabular statement Horace had made of the Minster property, and smoothed it out over his pointed knee. “It’s a very pretty table,” he said; “no bookkeeper could have done it better. I know it by heart, but we’ll keep it here in sight while you proceed.” “There’s nothing for me to proceed with,” said Horace, lolling back in his chair in turn. “I want to hear _you!_ Don’t let us waste time. Broadly, what do you propose?” “Broadly, what does everybody propose? To get for himself what somebody else has got. That’s human nature. It’s every kind of nature, down to the little chickens just hatched who start to chase the chap with the worm in his mouth before they’ve fairly got their tails out of the shell.” “You ought to write a book, Schuyler,” said Horace, using this familiar name for the first time: “‘Tenney on Dynamic Sociology’! But I interrupted your application. What particular worm have you got in your bill’s eye?” “We are all worms, so the Bible says. I suppose even those scrumptious ladies there come under that head, like we ordinary mortals.” Mr. Tenney pointed his agreeable metaphor by touching the paper on his knee with his joined finger-tips, and showed his small, sharpened teeth in a momentary smile. “I follow you,” said Horace, tentatively. “Go on!” “That’s a heap of money that you’ve ciphered out there, on that paper.” “Yes. True, it isn’t ours, and we’ve got nothing to do with it. But that’s a detail. Go on!” “A good deal of it can be ours, if you’ve got the pluck to go in with me.” Horace frowned. “Upon my word, Tenney,” he said, impatiently, “what do you mean?” “Jest what I said,” was the sententious and collected response. The younger man laughed with an uneasy assumption of scorn. “Is it a burglary you do me the honor to propose, or only common or garden robbery? Ought we to manage a little murder in the thing, or what do you say to arson? Upon my word, man, I believe that you don’t realize that what you’ve said is an insult!” “No, I don’t. You’re right there,” said the hardware merchant, in no wise ruffled. “But I do realize that you come pretty near being the dod-blamedest fool in Dearborn County.” “Much obliged for the qualification, I’m sure,” retorted Horace, who felt the mists of his half-simulated, half-instinctive anger fading away before the steady breath of the other man’s purpose. “But I interrupt you. Pray go on.”