expenses large. I drink and eat and smoke in plenty--it costs
much, I know. I do not pay for the playing of billiards, for I
play on your table; but still the money goes. Fishing on the reef
is only a rich man's pleasure. It is shocking, the cost of hooks
and cotton line. Yes, it is necessary that we be partners by the
law. I need the money. I shall get it from the head clerk in the
office."

So the papers were made out and recorded. A year later I was
compelled to complain.

"Charley," said I, "you are a wicked old fraud, a miserly
skinflint, a miserable land-crab. Behold, your share for the year
in all our partnership has been thousands of dollars. The head
clerk has given me this paper. It says that during the year you
have drawn just eighty-seven dollars and twenty cents."

"Is there any owing me?" he asked anxiously.

"I tell you thousands and thousands," I answered.

His face brightened as with an immense relief.

"It is well," he said. "See that the head-clerk keeps good
account of it. When I want it, I shall want it, and there must
not be a cent missing. If there is," he added fiercely, after a
pause, "it must come out of the clerk's wages."

And all the time, as I afterward learned, his will, drawn up by
Carruthers and making me sole beneficiary, lay in the American