Next day it looked better than ever.  Safety not only appeared in the afternoon but he brought me a quart jar of honey from his own bees.  Any one not having looked up his criminal record would little understand what this meant.  I pretended to be too busy to be startled at the gift, which broke thirty years of complete inactivity in that line.  I looked worried and important with a litter of papers on my desk and seemed to have no time to waste on callers.  He mentioned mules once or twice with no effect whatever, then says he hears I’m going into a new line that seems like it might have a few dollars in it, and he hopes I won’t lose my all, because so many things nowadays look good till they’re tried.  I was crafty.  I said I might be going into a new line, then again it might be nothing but idle talk and he better not believe everything he hears.

He took up the jar of honey and fondled it, with his face looking like he was laying a loved one to rest, and said he wouldn’t mind going into something new himself if he could be sure it was sound, because the stock business at present was a dog’s life.  He said the war was to be won by food, and every patriot should either go across or come across, and he was trying to stand by the flag and save all the food he could, but by the way his help acted at mealtime you’d think they was a gang of German spies.  Watch ’em eat beans, he said, and you’d think they’d never heard that beans had gone from three cents a pound to sixteen; but they had heard it, because he’d told ’em so in plain English more than once.  But it had no effect.  The way they dished into ’em you’d think we’d been endowed with beans the same as with God’s own sunlight.

He said it was discouraging to a staunch patriot.  Here was the President trying to make democracy safe for the world, and he was now going to stand by the Administration even if he had voted the Republican ticket up to now; but three of his men had quit only yesterday and the war was certainly lost if the labouring classes kept on making gods of their stomachs that way.  And as a matter of fact now, as between old friends and neighbours, if I had something that looked good, why not keep it all together just with us here in the valley, he, though a poor man, being able to scrape up a few thousand dollars in round numbers for any enterprise that was a cinch.

And the old hound being worth a good half million dollars at that instant!  But I kept control of my face and looked still more worried and important and said I might have to take in a good man, and then again I might not.  I couldn’t tell till I got some odd lots of stock cleaned up.  Then I looked at some more documents and, like I was talking unconsciously to myself, I muttered, though distinctly:  “Now that there bunch of runt mules—­they’ll have to go; but, of course, not for any mere song.”

Then I studied some more documents in a masterful manner and forgot my caller entirely till at last he pussyfooted out, having caught sight of Sandy down by the corral.