nce to scalp the market for a couple of cents
a bushel, and I bought 10,000 September, intending to turn over the
profits to you as a little present, so that you could see the town and
have a good time without it's costing you anything."

The Deacon judged from Bill's expression that he had got nipped and was
going to try to unload the loss on him, so he changed his face to the
one which he used when attending the funeral of any one who hadn't been
a professor, and came back quick and hard:

"I'm surprised, William, that you should think I would accept money made
in gambling. Let this be a lesson to you. How much did you lose?"

"That's the worst of it--I didn't lose; I made two hundred dollars," and
Bill hove another sigh.

"Made two hundred dollars!" echoed the Deacon, and he changed his face
again for the one which he used when he found a lead quarter in his
till and couldn't remember who had passed it on him.

"Yes," Bill went on, "and I'm ashamed of it, for you've made me see
things in a new light. Of course, after what you've said, I know it
would be an insult to offer you the money. And I feel now that it
wouldn't be right to keep it myself. I must sleep on it and try to find
the straight thing to do."

I guess it really didn't interfere with Bill's sleep, but the Deacon sat
up with the corpse of that two hundred dollars, you bet. In the morning
at breakfast he asked Brother Bill to explain all about this speculating
business, what made the market go up and down, and whether real corn or
wheat or pork figured in any stage of a deal. Bill looked sort of sad
and dreamy-eyed, as if his conscience hadn't digested that two hundred
yet, but he was mighty obliging about explaining everything to Zeke. He
had changed his face for the one which he wore when he sold an easy
customer ground peas and chicory for O. G. Java, and every now and then
he gulped as if he was going to start a hymn. When Bill told him how
good and bad weather sent the market up and down, he nodded and said
that that part of it was all right, because the weather was of the Lord.

"Not on the Board of Trade it isn't," Bill answered back; "at least, not
to any marked extent; it's from the weather man or some liar in the corn
belt, and, as the weather man usually guesses wrong, I reckon there
isn't any special inspiration about it. The game is to guess what's
going to happen, not what has happened, and by the time the real weather
comes along ever