then I told him how I wanted to go and do something and be somebody."

[Illustration: "He pumped me dry."]

Tim stopped suddenly, and winked at Captain. "I told him I wanted to
go away and see something as you had done, for I was weary of listening
to your accounts of things you'd seen. It's awful to have to listen to
another's travels. It must be fine to tell about your own."

"Well, is it my talking that's driving you away, or is it Weston's
alluring offers?"

"Alluring?" Tim laughed. "I'll say for Weston, he is frank. He told
me that to his mind business was worse than death. He was born to it.
His father left it to him and he has to keep it going to live; but he
lets his partner look after it mostly, and he is always worrying lest
his partner should die and leave him with the whole thing on his hands.
He told me I'd have to drudge in a dark office over books for ten hours
a day, and that it would be years before I began to see any rewards.
By that time I would probably decide that the old-fashioned scheme of
having kings born to order was more sensible than making men wear their
lives out trying to become rulers. A cow was contented, he said,
because it was satisfied to stand under a tree and breathe the free
air, and look up into the blue skies and over the green fields, and
chew the cud. As long as the cow was satisfied with one cud it would
be contented; but once the idea got abroad in the pasture that two cuds
were required for a respectable cow, peace and happiness were gone
forever."

"Our lanky stranger seems a wise man," said I. "In the face of all