"Jerry he looked at me pretty hard, and then says he: 'You're about the close-fisted and meanest man I ever met with. Here I offer you a third part of my money, and all you've got to do is to take it and go away peaceable. I'd be willin' to bet two to one that it's more than you expected to get, and yet you are not satisfied; now, I'll be hanged if I'm going to do business with you.'--'You can be hanged if you like,' says I, 'but you'll do the business all the same.'--'No, I won't,' says he, and he turns to Putty Henderson. 'Now, Putty,' says he, 'you've got a pile more sense that this pal of yourn, and I'm goin' to see if I can't do business with you. Now, you and me together can lick this Tommy Randall just as easy as not, and if you'll help me do it I'll not only divide the money with you, but I'll give you fifty dollars extra, so that instead of fifteen hundred and fifty dollars--that's all he'd given you, if he didn't cheat you--you'll have sixteen hundred, and I'll have fifteen hundred instead of the thousand and thirty-three dollars which I would have had left if my first offer had been took. So, Putty, what do you say to that?' Now, Putty, he must have been a little sore with me on account of the arguments we'd had about dividin', and he was mighty glad besides to get the chance of makin' fifty dollars extry, and so he said it was all right, and he'd agree. Then I thought it was about time for me to take in some of my sail, and says I: 'Jerry, that's a pretty good joke, and you can take my hat as soon as I get a new one, but of course I don't mean to be hard on you, and if you really have bills to pay to-morrow I'll take a third, and Putty'll take another, and we'll go away peaceful.'--'No, you won't,' sings out Jerry, and with that he jumps out of bed right at me, and Putty Henderson he comes at me from the other side, and, between the two, they gave me the worst lickin' I ever got in my born days, and then they dragged me down stairs and kicked me out the front door, and I had hardly time to pick myself up before I saw a policeman about a block off, and if he hadn't been a fat one he'd had me sure. It wouldn't have been pleasant, for I was a good deal wanted about that time. "So you see, ladies and gents, that it's true what I said,--things don't always go right in our line of business no more than any other one." "I think you were served exactly right," said Aunt Martha; "and I wonder such an experience did not induce you to reform." "It did, ma'am, it did," said the burglar. "I made a vow that night that if ever again I had to call in any one to help me in business of that kind I wouldn't go pards with him. I'd pay him so much for the job, and I'd take the risks, and I've stuck to it. "But even that don't always work. Luck sometimes goes ag'in' a man, even when he's working by himself. I remember a thing of that kind that was beastly hard on me. A gentleman employed me to steal his daughter."