"Appreciate it! I should say she did. She just worships it because it
came from you, and say, she has your photograph on the wall where she
can see it all the time. She just dotes on that picture. I tell her
there is the chance of her life, a fine house, fine clothes, a chance
to go abroad and cultivate her musical talent, become a great singer
and meet dukes and lords and crowned heads. Why, the girl is just
crazy over you, and I believe she would marry you even if you did not
have a cent. It is like marrying December to May, you sixty and she
nineteen, pretty and vivacious--warm up your old bones, eh?"

Rayder's eyes shone and he stroked his beard with delight. "Charley,"
he called to his office boy, "bring up a quart of whisky, some lemons
and sugar."

"Sweet creature, I love thee," said Amos a few minutes later, holding
up a half goblet of whisky. "You do the proper thing in setting out
these kind of glasses; puts me in mind of my old home down in Texas,
where we never drink out of anything smaller than a tin cup or a
gourd."

"Here is to Annie and Rayder--may your posterity become presidents
and wives of presidents."

"Drink hearty," said Rayder, emptying his glass, which he had filled
to the fullness of Amos' out of compliment.

"Charley, bring up a box of perfectos," he shouted. "You may then lock
up and go home."

The glasses were again drained and the two black crows chattered until
the streets were growing quiet for the night. Supper was forgotten in
the love feast of Amos and Rayder.

"Do you know, Amos, I always did love you just like a brother?"

"Here, too, Rayder, you know the first time we saw each other, I sez
to myself--I sez--there is a man that would stick to a friend through
thick and thin."

"You are that kind of a man yourself, Amos, is the reason you have a
good opinion of me. I never had a friend in distress yet that I didn't
help him out."

"That's right, Rayder, that's right. Them's the qualities that go to
make up nature's noblemen. Lord, if I had a known you years ago we'd
a bin millionaires--my knowledge of mines and your sagacity. That's
what counts, and you never fail in your estimate of men, either. Lord,
you was born under lucky stars.

"Take another drink, Rayder, take a cistern full. 'Taint often we meet
on auspicious occasions like this, and we won't go home 'till mornin,'
and we won't go home 'till morning, hic--hurrah for Annie, Rayder, and
a million outer the mine."