tient.

"Don't you want to shoot 'em off?" he inquired. "Because if you do
you'll need ammunition. You ought to have a thousand rounds, which will
come to a little over three times the actual cost of the guns
themselves. You see when you shoot off a gun at an army you want to have
plenty of cartridges or else be ready to run like hell.

"On second thought," he added, "I advise you to give up the Mausers and
go in for Springfields over here--old ones--you can get 'em cheap.
They're no good at over a mile, but for the first few months your
fellahs will be lucky if they hit a man at a hundred yards. And there's
one good point about Springfields, they make a devil of a noise--and
that's all you need for a starter, noise enough to break into headlines
all over the world as a 'Brave Little Rebel Army.' If you can do that,
and the word goes around on the quiet that you're using American
rifles--well, there's a kind of a sentiment in our trade--you'll find us
all behind you. We'll even _lose_ money. We're a queer bunch."

"But wait!" cried the Russian. "Dere ees a trouble! Your tr-reaty wit'
Russia! Have you not a tr-reaty which makes it forbidden to sell to me
guns?"

Again that look of patience:

"Yes, General, we have a tr-reaty. But we'll ship your guns as grand
pianos to Naples, from there by slow boat down to Brazil and then up to
the Baltic, where they'll arrive with their pedigrees lost. Our agent
will be there ahead, he'll have found a customhouse man he can fix,
he'll cable us where--and when those fifty pianos are landed the said
official will open the box marked twenty-two. It'll take him over an
hour to do it, the boards will be nailed so cussedly tight. And he'll
find a real piano inside. Then he'll look at the other forty-nine crates
and say, 'Oh, Hell!' in Russian. Then they'll go on to wherever you want
'em--and you'll revolute. But don't forget that what you need most is
the livest press agent you can find. I've got to go now. Think it over.
And if you want to do business with me come to my office to-morrow at
ten."

The man of business left us. And while the dreamer talked like mad and
finally decided that as Mausers were "shoot farther guns" he had better
go to Vienna, I watched the twinkle in Dad's gray eyes and thought of
the cool contempt in his friend's. And from being amused I became rather
sore. For, after all, this little Russian cuss had risked his life for
fifteen years and expected to lose i