dge of a steamer making up to a dock against a strong
flood tide, with stupid mates fore and aft, and rotten lines that won't
hold when you get them over the dolphins, and the tide has grabbed you
and slammed you into the dock and done five hundred dollars' worth of
damage--just feel like that, Matt--"

"If I do I'll cuss something scandalous," Matt warned him.

"The harder the better."

"And I'm to keep this money in my pocket, and let him cancel my charter,
and take that northbound cargo away from me, and collect the freight on
me--"

"Exactly that! He'll withdraw his suit against you to-morrow and release
your bank account, and then you decline to pay him the eighteen thousand
dollars you owe him until he gives an accounting of the freight money
he's collected. He'll tell you to go to Halifax, but you mustn't mind.
It's going to make him as happy as a fool to think he beat you in the
end."

A slow smile spread over Matt's face.

"Skinner," he said. "You're a good old wagon, that's what you are. I'm
sorry we ever had any mix-up, and we'll never have another--after this
one--and this is going to be a fake. You see, Skinner, if we're going
to put one over on Cappy let's have it one worth while--so this is the
program. I've just arrived, with blood in my eye, to clean out the Blue
Star office, and I'm starting in with the general manager. Clinch
me now, and we'll wrestle all over the office and bang against the
furniture and that door there--"

As Cappy Ricks was wont to remark, Mr. Skinner could "get" one before
one could "get" one's self.

"Get out of my office, you infernal rowdy," he yelled loud enough to
awaken Cappy Ricks next door. Then he clinched with Matt Peasley.

"A good fight," said Cappy Ricks half an hour after Matt Peasley had
been pried away from Mr. Skinner and forced to listen to reason, "is the
grandest thing in life. Now there's that crazy boy gone out in a rage
just because he had the presumption to tangle with me in a business deal
and get dog-gone well licked! He put it all over me yesterday, thinking
I couldn't protect myself. Well, he knows better now, Skinner; he knows
better now! In-fer-nal young scoundrel! Wow, but wasn't he a wild man,
Skinner? Wasn't he though?" And Cappy Ricks chuckled.

"You have probably cured him of sucking eggs," Mr. Skinner observed
enigmatically.

"Well, I handed the young pup a dose of cayenne pepper, at any rate,"
Cappy bragged, "and I wouldn't have m