Well, it warn’t good to go on talking about them, lovely as they was in their life, and dear to us in their life and death both, because it didn’t do no good, and made us too down-hearted. Jim allowed he was going to live as good a life as he could, so he could see them again in a better world; and Tom kept still and didn’t tell him they was only Mohammedans; it warn’t no use to disappoint him, he was feeling bad enough just as it was. When we woke up next morning we was feeling a little cheerfuller, and had had a most powerful good sleep, because sand is the comfortablest bed there is, and I don’t see why people that can afford it don’t have it more. And it’s terrible good ballast, too; I never see the balloon so steady before. Tom allowed we had twenty tons of it, and wondered what we better do with it; it was good sand, and it didn’t seem good sense to throw it away. Jim says: “Mars Tom, can’t we tote it back home en sell it? How long’ll it take?” “Depends on the way we go.” “Well, sah, she’s wuth a quarter of a dollar a load at home, en I reckon we’s got as much as twenty loads, hain’t we? How much would dat be?” “Five dollars.” “By jings, Mars Tom, le’s shove for home right on de spot! Hit’s more’n a dollar en a half apiece, hain’t it?” “Yes.” “Well, ef dat ain’t makin’ money de easiest ever _I_ struck! She jes’ rained in—never cos’ us a lick o’ work. Le’s mosey right along, Mars Tom.” But Tom was thinking and ciphering away so busy and excited he never heard him. Pretty soon he says: “Five dollars—sho! Look here, this sand’s worth—worth—why, it’s worth no end of money.” “How is dat, Mars Tom? Go on, honey, go on!” “Well, the minute people knows it’s genuwyne sand from the genuwyne Desert of Sahara, they’ll just be in a perfect state of mind to git hold of some of it to keep on the what-not in a vial with a label on it for a curiosity. All we got to do is to put it up in vials and float around all over the United States and peddle them out at ten cents apiece. We’ve got all of ten thousand dollars’ worth of sand in this boat.” Me and Jim went all to pieces with joy, and begun to shout whoopjamboreehoo, and Tom says: “And we can keep on coming back and fetching sand, and coming back and fetching more sand, and just keep it a-going till we’ve carted this whole Desert over there and sold it out; and there ain’t ever going to be any opposition, either, because we’ll take out a patent.” “My goodness,” I says, “we’ll be as rich as Creosote, won’t we, Tom?” “Yes—Creesus, you mean. Why, that dervish was hunting in that little hill for the treasures of the earth, and didn’t know he was walking over the real ones for a thousand miles. He was blinder than he made the driver.” “Mars Tom, how much is we gwyne to be worth?” “Well, I don’t know yet. It’s got to be ciphered, and it ain’t the easiest job to do, either, because it’s over four million square miles of sand at ten cents a vial.”