Pennybaker pushed up his hat and looked Farnham fairly in the face.  The assertion of his independence seemed to give him great gratification.  He said once more, slowly closing one eye and settling back in his former attitude against the wall, while he aimed a deluge of tobacco-juice at the base of the wall before him:  “I’m a-kickin’ like a Texas steer.”

He waited a moment to allow these impressive words to have their full effect, while Farnham preserved a serious and attentive face.

“Well, this bein’ the case,” continued Pennybaker, “I comes to you, as one gentleman to another, and I asks whether we can’t agree against this selfish and corrupt game of Merritt and Dorman.  For, you see, I don’t get a smell out of what they’re doin’.  I’m out in the cold if their slate goes through.”

“I don’t see that I can be of any service to you, Mr. Pennybaker.  If I have any influence in the matter, it shall be given to Miss Matchin, whom I proposed once before.”

“Exactly!  Now you’re talkin’.  Miss Matchin shall have it, on one little proviso that won’t hurt you nor me nor nobody.  Say the word, and it’s a whack.”

And he lifted up his hand to strike the bargain.

“What is it?” asked Farnham, in a tone which was severe and contemptuous, in spite of him.

“Namely, just this,” answered Pennybaker, “You ain’t on the make; you’re fixed.  You don’t care about these d——­ little things except to help a friend once ’n awhile,” he said, in a large and generous way.  “But I ain’t that kind yet.  I’ve got to look out for myself—­pretty lively, too.  Now, I’ll tell you what’s my racket.  You let me perpose Miss Matchin’s name and then go and tell her father that I put it through, and it’ll be done slick as a whistle.  That’s all solid, ain’t it?”

Farnham’s brow clouded.  He did not answer at once.  Pennybaker repeated his question a little anxiously: 

“That’s all solid, ain’t it?”

“You will excuse me, Mr. Pennybaker, if I do not quite understand your racket, as you call it.  I do not see how you make anything out of this.  Matchin is a poor man.  You surely do not intend——­”

“To strike Saul for a divvy?  Nothing of the sort,” said Pennybaker, without the least offence.  “The whole thing lies just here.  Among gentlemen there’s no use being shy about it.  My brother wants to be assessor in Saul Matchin’s ward.  Saul’s got a lot of influence among the boys in the planing-mills, and I want his help.  You see?”

Farnham thought he saw, and, after assenting to Pennybaker’s eager demand, “That’s all solid?” he walked away, too much relieved by the thought that Maud was provided for to question too closely the morality of the proceeding which the sordid rascal had exposed to him.

In the afternoon, at the meeting of the board, the programme agreed upon was strictly carried out.