“Now, see here, Mr. Barker; I’m talking to you.  You’re as clever a young man as there is in New York.  Now, listen to me; I’m talking to you,” said Mr. Screw excitedly.  “That man turned me out of his house—­turned me out of doors, sir, yesterday afternoon; and now he writes me this letter; look here, look at it; read it for yourself, can’t you?  And so he makes tracks for Europe, and leaves no address behind.  An honest man isn’t going to act like that, sir—­is he, now?”

“Not much,” said Barker, as he took the letter.  He read it through twice, and gave it back.  “Not much,” he repeated.  “Is it true that he has drawn no money?”

“Well, yes, I suppose it is,” answered Screw reluctantly, for this was the weak point in his argument.  “However, it would be just like such a leg to make everything sure in playing a big game.  You see he has left himself the rear platform, so he can jump off when his car is boarded.”

“However,” said Barker sententiously, “I must say it is in his favour.  What we want are facts, you know, Mr. Screw.  Besides, if he had taken anything, I should have been responsible, because I accepted him abroad as the right man.”

“Well, as you say, there is nothing gone—­not a red.  So if he likes to get away, he can; I’m well rid of him.”

“Now that’s the way to look at it.  Don’t be so down in the mouth, sir; it will all come straight enough.”  Barker smiled benignly, knowing it was all crooked enough at present.

“Well, I’m damned anyhow,” said Mr. Screw, which was not fair to himself, for he was an honest man, acting very properly according to his lights.  It was not his fault if Barker deceived him, and if that hot-livered Swede was angry.

“Never mind,” answered Barker, rather irrelevantly; I will see him before he sails, and tell you what I think about it.  He is dead sure to give himself away, somehow, before he gets off.”

“Well, sail in, young man,” said Screw, biting off the end of a cigar. “I don’t want to see him again, you can take your oath.”

“All right; that settles it.  I came about something else, though.  I know you can tell me all about this suit against the Western Union, can’t you?”

So the two men sat in their arm-chairs and talked steadily, as only Americans can talk, without showing any more signs of fatigue than if they were snoring; and it cost them nothing.  If the Greeks of the time of Pericles could be brought to life in America, they would be very like modern Americans in respect of their love of talking and of their politics.  Terrible chatterers in the market-place, and great wranglers in the council—­the greatest talkers living, but also on occasion the greatest orators, with a redundant vivacity of public life in their political veins, that magnifies and inflames the diseases of the parts, even while it gives an unparalleled harmony to the whole.  The Greeks had more, for their activity, hampered by the narrow limits of their