“How much money will you want, Mr. Brown?”

“Well, about seven hundred dollars,” said the elder, replacing his hat, and turning a furtive look upon the warehouse man.  The other was tapping with his pencil upon the little shelf lying across the rail.

“I can get you five hundred.”

“But I oughter have seven.”

“Can’t arrange for that amount.  Wait till later in the season, and come again.  Money is very tight now.  How much cotton will you raise?”

“Well, I count on a hundr’d bales.  An’ you can’t git the sev’n hundr’d dollars?”

“Like to oblige you, but can’t right now; will fix it for you later on.”

“Well,” said the elder, slowly, “fix up the papers for five, an’ I’ll make it go as far as possible.”

The papers were drawn.  A note was made out for $552.50, for the interest was at one and a half per cent. for seven months, and a mortgage on ten mules belonging to the elder was drawn and signed.  The elder then promised to send his cotton to the warehouse to be sold in the fall, and with a curt “Anything else?” and a “Thankee, that’s all,” the two parted.

Elder Brown now made an effort to recall the supplemental commissions shouted to him upon his departure, intending to execute them first, and then take his written list item by item.  His mental resolves had just reached this point when a new thought made itself known.  Passersby were puzzled to see the old man suddenly snatch his headpiece off and peer with an intent and awestruck air into its irregular caverns.  Some of them were shocked when he suddenly and vigorously ejaculated: 

“Hannah-Maria-Jemimy! goldarn an’ blue blazes!”

He had suddenly remembered having placed his memoranda in that hat, and as he studied its empty depths his mind pictured the important scrap fluttering along the sandy scene of his early-morning tumble.  It was this that caused him to graze an oath with less margin that he had allowed himself in twenty years.  What would the old lady say?

Alas!  Elder Brown knew too well.  What she would not say was what puzzled him.  But as he stood bareheaded in the sunlight a sense of utter desolation came and dwelt with him.  His eye rested upon sleeping Balaam anchored to a post in the street, and so as he recalled the treachery that lay at the base of all his affliction, gloom was added to the desolation.

To turn back and search for the lost paper would have been worse than useless.  Only one course was open to him, and at it went the leader of his people.  He called at the grocery; he invaded the recesses of the dry-goods establishments; he ransacked the hardware stores; and wherever he went he made life a burden for the clerks, overhauling show-cases and pulling down whole shelves of stock.  Occasionally an item of his memoranda would come to light, and thrusting his hand into his capacious pocket, where lay the proceeds of his check, he would pay for it upon the spot, and insist upon having it rolled up.  To the suggestion of the slave whom he had in charge for the time being that the articles be laid aside until he had finished, he would not listen.