was as
good as real estate or Government bonds. As for selling him, ten
thousand wouldn't be a temptation. Would the gentlemen just step around
to the stable?

It was then I began to put up the odds on Pinckney. I got a wink from
them black eyes of his, and there was the very divil an' all in 'em,
with his face as straight as a crowbar.

"Certainly," says he, "we'll be happy to meet Rajah."

They had him moored to one of the floor-beams with an ox-chain around
his nigh hind foot. He wasn't as big as all out doors, nor he wasn't any
vest-pocket edition either. As elephants go, he wouldn't have made the
welter-weight class by about a ton. He was what I'd call just a handy
size, about two bureaus high by one wide. His iv'ry stoop rails had been
sawed off close to his jaw, so he didn't look any more wicked than a
foldin'-bed. And his eyes didn't have that shifty wait-till-I-get-loose
look they generally does. They were kind of soft, widowy,
oh-me-poor-child eyes.

"He is sad, very sad, about all this," says one of the real gents.
"Know? Rajah knows almost as much as we do, sir."

Pinckney took his word for it. "I think I shall accommodate you with
that loan," says he. "Come into the hotel."

Say, I didn't think you could gold-brick Pinckney as easy as that. One
of the guys wrote out a receipt and Pinckney shoved it into his pocket
handin' over a wad of yellow-backs. They didn't lose any time about
headin' southeast, those two in the ulsterets. Then we goes back to have
another look at Rajah.

"It's a wonderful thing, professor, this pride of possession," says
Pinckney. "Only a few persons in the world own elephants. I am one of
them. Even though it is only for a week, and he is miles away, I shall
feel that I own Rajah, and it will make me glad."

Then he winks, so I knows he's just bein' gay. But Rajah didn't seem so
gladsome. He was rockin' his head back and forth, and just as we gets
there out rolls a big tear, about a tumblerful.

"Can't we do something to chirk him up a bit?" says I. "He seems to take
it hard, being hung up on a ticket."

"There's something the matter with this elephant," says Pinckney, taking
a front view of him. "He's in pain. See if you can't find a veterinary,
professor."

Yes, they said there was a horse-doctor knockin' around the country
somewhere. He worked in the shingle-mill by spells, and then again in
the chair-factory, or did odd jobs. A blond-haired native turned up who
was