ge said that if any man had a
reasonable doubt, he ought to hold out. Now, I ain't convinced."

"Well, that's easy said," replied Mr. Eldridge, a little hotly, and he
arose, and left him.

The jurymen broke up into little knots, tilted their chairs back,
and settled into the easiest positions that their cramped quarters
allowed. Most of them lit their pipes; the captain, and one or two
whom he honored, smoked fragrant cigars, and the room was soon filled
with a dense cloud.

Eli sat alone by the window.

"Sometimes sell two at one house," said a lank book-agent, arousing
himself from a reverie; "once sold three."

"I think the Early Rose is about as profitable as any," said a little
farmer, with a large circular beard. "I used to favor Jacobs's
Seedling, but they haven't done so well with me of late years."

"Sometimes," said the book-agent, picking his teeth with a quill,
"you'll go to a house, and they'll say they can't be induced to buy a
book of any kind, historical, fictitious, or religious; but you just
keep on talking, and show the pictures--'Grant in Boyhood,' 'Grant a
Tanner,' 'Grant at Head-quarters,' 'Grant in the White House,' 'Grant
before Queen Victoria,' and they warm up, I tell you, and not
infrequently buy."

"Do you sell de 'Illustrated Bible,'" asked Washington, "wid de
Hypocrypha?"

"No; I have a more popular treatise--the 'Illustrated History of the
Bible.' Greater variety. Brings in the surrounding nations, in
costume. Cloth, three dollars; sheep, three-fifty; half calf,
five-seventy-five, full morocco, gilt edges, seven-fifty. Six hundred
and seven illustrations on wood and steel. Three different engravings
of Abraham alone. Four of Noah--'Noah before the Flood,' 'Noah
Building the Ark,' 'Noah Welcoming the Dove,' 'Noah on Ararat.' Steel
engraving of Ezekiel's Wheel, explaining prophecy. Jonah under the
gourd, Nineveh in the distance."

Mr. Eldridge and Captain Thomas had drifted into a discussion of
harbors, and the captain had drawn his chair up to the table, and,
with a cigar in his mouth, was explaining an ingeniously constructed
foreign harbor. He was making a rough sketch, with a pen.

"Here is north," he said; "here is the coast-line; here are the flats;
here are the sluice-gates; they store the water here, in----"

Some of the younger men had their heads together, in a corner, about
the tin-peddler, who was telling stories of people he had met in his
journeys, which brought