as gratified to see a dull flush spread over the other's face
at the insult. Loge was silent a moment, and then he said, dropping
his bantering manner, which indeed sat rather heavily upon him: "I
don't know why you should want to shoot at my scarfpin--or at me. I
don't know why you should suddenly lay a pistol between us. I don't,
in short, know why we should sit here paying each other left-handed
compliments, when it was merely my intention to make you a business
proposition."

"I have been waiting to hear what you had to say to me," said Cleggett,
without being in the least thrown off his guard by the other's change
of manner.

"If you had not chanced to drop in here today," said Loge, "I had
intended paying you a visit."

"I have had several visitors lately," said Cleggett nonchalantly, "and
I think at least two of them can make no claim that they were not
warmly received."

"Yes?" said Loge. But if Cleggett's meaning reached him he was too
cool a hand to show it. He persisted in his affectation of a
businesslike air. "Am I right in thinking that you have bought the
boat?"

"You are."

"To come to the point," said Loge, "I want to buy her from you. What
will you take for her?"

The proposition was unexpected to Cleggett, but he did not betray his
surprise.

"You want to buy her?" he said. "You want to buy the old hulk over
yonder in the canal?" He laughed, but continued: "What on earth can
your interest be in her?"

There was a trace of surliness in Loge's voice as he answered: "YOU
were enough interested in her to buy her, it seems. Why shouldn't I
have the same interest?"

Cleggett was silent a moment, and then he leaned across the table and
said with emphasis: "I have noticed your interest in the Jasper B.
since the day I first set foot on her. And let me warn you that unless
you show your curiosity in some other manner henceforth, you will
seriously regret it. A couple of your men have repented of your
interest already."

"My men? What do you mean by my men? I haven't any men." Loge's
imitation of astonishment was a piece of art; but if anything he
overdid it a trifle. He frowned in a puzzled fashion, and then said:
"You talk about my men; you speak riddles to me; you appear to threaten
me, but after all I have only made you a plain business proposition. I
ask you again, what will you take for her?"

"She's not for sale," said Cleggett shortly.

Loge did not speak again for a