But he's a New Yorker, and he'll brag about that all the time when he isn't picking up live wires or getting in front of street cars or paying out money to wire-tappers or standing under a safe that's being hoisted into a skyscraper. When a New Yorker does loosen up, says I, 'it's like the spring decomposition of the ice jam in the Allegheny River. He'll swamp you with cracked ice and back-water if you don't get out of the way.

"'It's mighty lucky for us, Andy, says I, 'that this cigar exponent with the parsley dressing saw fit to bedeck us with his childlike trust and altruism. For, says I, 'this money of his is an eyesore to my sense of rectitude and ethics. We can't take it, Andy; you know we can't, says I, 'for we haven't a shadow of a title to it—not a shadow. If there was the least bit of a way we could put in a claim to it I'd be willing to see him start in for another twenty years and make another $5,000 for himself, but we haven't sold him anything, we haven't been embroiled in a trade or anything commercial. He approached us friendly, says I, 'and with blind and beautiful idiocy laid the stuff in our hands. We'll have to give it back to him when he wants it.

"'Your arguments, says Andy, 'are past criticism or comprehension. No, we can't walk off with the money—as things now stand. I admire your conscious way of doing business, Jeff, says Andy, 'and I wouldn't propose anything that wasn't square in line with your theories of morality and initiative.

"'But I'll be away to-night and most of to-morrow Jeff, says Andy. 'I've got some business affairs that I want to attend to. When this free greenbacks party comes in to-morrow afternoon hold him here till I arrive. We've all got an engagement for dinner, you know.

"Well, sir, about 5 the next afternoon in trips the cigar man, with his eyes half open.