r."

The Genius touched a spring, and instantly, in a queer, tin-whistly
voice, he began to sing, "Little Annie Rooney".

"Good!" said Dodge; "he'll do. We'll give you your price. Leave him here
to-night, and come in to-morrow. We'll send you off to the back country
with him. Ninemile would be a good place to start in. Have a cigar?"

Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose a
cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out. They
could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.

Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description. When the
mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone, they usually go to sleep, and
forget to bite him. The climate is so hot that the very grasshoppers
crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun, climb up the window
curtains, and then go to sleep. The Riot Act never had to be read in
Ninemile. The only thing that can arouse the inhabitants out of their
lethargy is the prospect of a drink at somebody else's expense.

For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser
there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities if he
proved a success. They sent up the Genius, and one of their men who knew
the district well. The Genius was to manage the automaton, and the other
was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims, and collect the money,
geniuses being notoriously unreliable and loose in their cash. They got
through a good deal of whisky on the way up, and when they arrived at
Ninemile were in a cheerful mood, and disposed to take risks.

"Who'll we begin on?" said the Genius.

"Oh, hang it all," said the other, "let's make a start with Macpherson."

Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place. He was a
gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks, and freckled all over
with freckles as big as half-crowns. His eyebrows would have made
decent-sized moustaches for a cavalryman, and his moustaches looked like
horns. He was a fighter from the ground up, and had a desperate "down"
on canvassers generally, and on Sloper and Dodge's canvassers in
particular.

Sloper and Dodge had published a book called "Remarkable Colonials", and
Macpherson had written out his own biography for it. He was intensely
proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative made out
that he was descended from the original Fhairshon who swam round Noah's
Ark with his title-deeds in his te