looking pocket-books though, seems to me.
Ain't they rather long and narrow for pocket-books?"

"They go round the waist, sir, inside," said the boy "door open or
locked, wide awake on your feet or fast asleep in your chair, impossible
to be robbed with a money-belt."

"I see, I see. It _would_ be hard to rob one's money-belt. And I was
told to-day the Mississippi is a bad river for pick-pockets. How much
are they?"

"Only fifty cents, sir."

"I'll take one. There!"

"Thank-ee. And now there's a present for ye," with which, drawing from
his breast a batch of little papers, he threw one before the old man,
who, looking at it, read "_Counterfeit Detector_."

"Very good thing," said the boy, "I give it to all my customers who
trade seventy-five cents' worth; best present can be made them. Sell you
a money-belt, sir?" turning to the cosmopolitan.

"Excuse me, my fine fellow, but I never use that sort of thing; my money
I carry loose."

"Loose bait ain't bad," said the boy, "look a lie and find the truth;
don't care about a Counterfeit Detector, do ye? or is the wind East,
d'ye think?"

"Child," said the old man in some concern, "you mustn't sit up any
longer, it affects your mind; there, go away, go to bed."

"If I had some people's brains to lie on. I would," said the boy, "but
planks is hard, you know."

"Go, child--go, go!"

"Yes, child,--yes, yes," said the boy, with which roguish parody, by way
of conge, he scraped back his hard foot on the woven flowers of the
carpet, much as a mischievous steer in May scrapes back his horny hoof
in the pasture; and then with a flourish of his hat--which, like the
rest of his tatters, was, thanks to hard times, a belonging beyond his
years, though not beyond his experience, being a grown man's cast-off
beaver--turned, and with the air of a young Caffre, quitted the place.

"That's a strange boy," said the old man, looking after him. "I wonder
who's his mother; and whether she knows what late hours he keeps?"

"The probability is," observed the other, "that his mother does not
know. But if you remember, sir, you were saying something, when the boy
interrupted you with his door."

"So I was.--Let me see," unmindful of his purchases for the moment,
"what, now, was it? What was that I was saying? Do _you_ remember?"

"Not perfectly, sir; but, if I am not mistaken, it was something like
this: you hoped you did not distrust the creature; for that would imply
distrust o