e end of the brief
conversation, and he wasted no further time in parley, but hoisted Lou
up over the wheel and climbed in beside her.

As the reluctant horses started off once more the driver turned to him:

"Hope you're a hustler, young man; got to git them eggs off the wagon in
a jiffy when we git to Riverburgh, in time to ketch the boat. Don't you
try no scuttlin' off on me after I give you the ride; Riverburgh's a
reg'lar city, an' they's a policeman on the docks."

"I'll keep the bargain my sister made for me," Jim answered shortly. He
had observed the poultry-farm from which the old man had started, with
its miserable little hovel of a house and immense spread of
chicken-runs, and drawn his own conclusions as to the character of its
owner. "You needn't be afraid I'll shirk."

"Well," grumbled the other, "I don't hold with pickin' up tramps in the
road, but I'm sick of handin' out good money to them loafers at the dock
to unload, an' I ain't got a hired man to take along no more; they're
allus lazy, good-for-nothin' fellers that eat more'n they work out, let
alone their wages goin' sky-hootin'!"

"But you must be making a handsome profit, with the price of eggs going
up, too, all the time," Jim remarked.

The old man gave him a sly glance.

"That's how you look at it," he replied. "They oughter go up twice the
price they be. My wife's doin' the hired man's work now, an' she's allus
pesterin' me to git an incubator, but them things cost a powerful sight
of money, an' I don't hold with new-fangled notions; too much resk to
them. You can allus sell hens when they git too old to set or lay, but
what're you going to do with a wore-out incubator?"

He cackled shrilly at his own witticism and then grew morose again. "The
way things is, there ain't no profit skeercely in nothin'."

They jogged along drowsily through the slumberous heat, while the old
man continued his harangue against the cost of everything except his own
commodity, and the underfed horses strained to drag their burden over
the hilly road. The mountains had been left behind, and all over the
rolling hillsides about them on either hand the vineyards stretched in
undulating lines, each heavy with the load of purpling grapes.

Mile after mile passed slowly beneath the creaking wheels of the wagon;
noon came, and still Riverburgh remained tantalizingly ahead. At last,
on the rise of a hill, the old man pulled up and pointed with his whip
to the spr