ut anythin'
like they did about their Gospel outfit, an' I ain't sayin' anythin'
agin it, you'd put up seven hundred without turnin' a hair."

"You're the stuff, Bill! Good man! You're talkin' now! What did they say
to that, eh, Bill?"

"Well," said Bill, slowly, "they CALLED me!"

"No! That so? An' what did you do, Bill?"

"Gave 'em a dead straight bluff!"

[Yells of enthusiastic approval.]

"Did they take you, Bill?"

"Well, I reckon they did. The master, here, put it down."

Whereupon I read the terms of Bill's bluff.

There was a chorus of very hearty approvals of Bill's course in "not
taking any water" from that variously characterized "outfit." But the
responsibility of the situation began to dawn upon them when some one
asked:

"How are you going about it, Bill?"

"Well," drawled Bill, with a touch of sarcasm in his voice, "there's
that pinto."

"Pinto be blanked!" said young Hill. "Say, boys, is that little girl
going to lose that one pony of hers to help out her friend The Pilot?
Good fellow, too, he is! We know he's the right sort."

[Chorus of, "Not by a long sight; not much; we'll put up the stuff!
Pinto!"]

"Then," went on Bill, even more slowly, "there's The Pilot; he's going
for to ante up a month's pay; 'taint much, o' course--twenty-eight a
month and grub himself. He might make it two," he added, thoughtfully.
But Bill's proposal was scorned with contemptuous groans. "Twenty-eight
a month and grub himself o' course ain't much for a man to save money
out ov to eddicate himself." Bill continued, as if thinking aloud, "O'
course he's got his mother at home, but she can't make much more than
her own livin', but she might help him some."

This was altogether too much for the crowd. They consigned Bill and his
plans to unutterable depths of woe.

"O' course," Bill explained, "it's jest as you boys feel about it. Mebbe
I was, bein' hot, a little swift in givin' 'em the bluff."

"Not much, you wasn't! We'll see you out! That's the talk! There's
between twenty and thirty of us here."

"I should be glad to contribute thirty or forty if need be," said The
Duke, who was standing not far off, "to assist in the building of a
church. It would be a good thing, and I think the parson should be
encouraged. He's the right sort."

"I'll cover your thirty," said young Hill; and so it went from one to
another in tens and fifteens and twenties, till within half an hour I
had entered three hundred and