, Morris?" he
cried. "Are you sick?"

"Must a feller got to be sick to want to help you out, Max?" Morris
said. "And anyhow, Max, it's as much a favour to us as it is to you."

By this time they had reached the Prince Clarence Hotel and Morris led
the way to the cafe.

"Say, lookyhere, Max, the whole thing is this," he said after they were
seated: "I'm going to lend you three thousand dollars to go into a
business with a feller which he got a store in a small town upstate, and
you're going to do it."

Max shook his head.

"No; I ain't," he answered. "I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks."

"If you sell goods wholesale you could sell 'em retail," Morris
declared. "So, if you would listen to me I'll tell you what the
proposition is."

Forthwith Morris unfolded to Max the history of Sam Green's mercantile
establishment.

"And now, after all them years, Max," he concluded, "that feller gets
practically run out of town because his bank shuts down on him."

"What's the name of the place?" Max asked.

"The name of the place?" Morris repeated.

"Yes," Max said, "the name of the town where the fellow comes from."

Morris scratched his head for a minute.

"I should remember the name of every little one-horse town where we got
customers!" he said. "The name of the place don't matter, Max; it's got
two thousand people living in it and practically only one store, because
the way Sam Green is running his business now you couldn't call it a
store at all."

Max rose from the table.

"I'll tell you the truth, Morris," he said; "what's the use wasting our
time? The proposition ain't attractive. I was born and raised in a
one-horse town upstate; and, even though I ain't been back for twenty
years, I know what it's like. You'll have to excuse me."

"But, Max----" Morris commenced.

"I needn't tell you that I'm more than grateful to you, Morris," Max
concluded; "and if ever I want to dispose of my diamonds you shall have
first chance."

He shook Morris's limp and unresisting hand and returned at once to the
showroom of Kleiman & Elenbogen.

"Any one come for me, Miss Cashman?" he asked the bookkeeper, who was
busily engaged in the preparation of the firm's monthly statement.

"Say, lookyhere, Kirschner," Louis Kleiman called from his office;
"leave the girl alone, can't you? She's got enough to do tending to our
business."

"I'm only asking her if she has any word for me," Max replied.

"I don't care what you