gh
now. Ah, hum!... But there, let's get under way again or you'll go to
sleep before the ship makes port. I declare, that was father's word,
too, I'm always quotin' him.... Let me see.... Oh, yes.... When father
said that about the one hundred and fifty shares controllin' Cap'n
Jethro looked at Raish and Raish looked at him. Then Raish laughed, too,
only his laugh isn't much like father's.

"'_I_ got those extra shares taken up,' he said, 'and I was particular
who took 'em. There's mighty few of those shares will be sold unless
I say the word. Most of the folks that bought those shares are under
consider'ble obligation to me.' Just what he meant by that I don't know,
of course, but I can guess. Raish makes it a point to have people
under what he calls 'obligations' to him. It comes in handy for him, in
politics and other ways, to have 'em that way. He lends money and holds
mortgages and all that, and that's where the obligations come in....
Well, anyhow, that's what he said and, although father didn't look any
too happy at the time and wouldn't talk about it afterward, it seemed
to settle the objection about the hundred and fifty shares. So the new
company got under way, the stockholders paid their money in, old Cap'n
Ebenezer Thomas of Denboro was made president and Raish Pulcifer was
vice president and Judge Daniel Seaver of Wellmouth Centre was secretary
and treasurer. The Judge was Wellmouth Centre's biggest gun, rich--at
least, that's what everybody thought then--and pompous and dignified and
straight-backed as an old-fashioned church pew.

"Well, I'm pretty near to the end, although it may not seem that way.
For the first few months all hands were talkin' about what great things
the Wellmouth Development Company was goin' to do. Then Judge Seaver
gave 'em somethin' else to talk about. He shot himself one night, and
they found him dead and all alone in the sittin' room of his big house.
And when they came to look over his papers and affairs they found that,
instead of bein' rich, he hadn't a cent in the world. He had lost all
his own money gamblin' in stocks, and, not only that, but he'd lost all
that other folks had given him to take care of. He was treasurer of the
Eagle Fish Freezin' Company and he'd stolen there until that company had
to fail. And, bein' secretary and treasurer of the Wellmouth Development
Company, he had sent the fifty thousand its stockholders paid in after
the rest of his stealin's. All th