Hiram blinked inquiringly at his enigmatic friend.

“It was what I was thinkin’ of—­gold brick,” the Cap’n went on.  “I thought that prob’ly you knew some stylish and reliable gold-bricker—­havin’ met same when you was travellin’ round in the show business.”

Replying to Mr. Look’s indignant snort Cap’n Sproul hastened to say:  “Oh, I don’t mean that you had any gold-bricker friends, but that you knew one I could hire.  Probably, though, you don’t know of any.  Most like you don’t.  I realize that the gold-bricker idea ain’t the one to use.  There’s the trouble in findin’ a reliable one.  And even when the feller got afoul of him, the chances are the old land-pirut would steal the brick.  This here”—­jabbing thumb at Mr. Bodge—­“is fresher bait.  I believe the old shark will gobble it if he’s fished for right.  What’s your idea?”

“Well, generally speakin’,” drawled Hiram, sarcastically, “it is that you’ve got softenin’ of the brain.  I can’t make head or tail out of anything that you’re sayin’.”

Cap’n Sproul waked suddenly from the reverie in which he had been talking as much to himself as to Hiram.

“Say, look here, you can understand this, can’t you, that I’ve been done out of good property—­buncoed by a jeeroosly old hunk of hornbeam?”

“Oh, I got bulletins on that, all right,” assented Hiram.

“Well, from what you know of me, do you think I’m the kind of a man that’s goin’ to squat like a hen in a dust-heap and not do him?  Law?  To Tophet with your law!  Pneumony, lightnin’, and lawyers—­they’re the same thing spelled different.  I’m just goin’ to do him, that’s all, and instink is whisperin’ how.”  He turned his back on the showman and ran calculating eye over Mr. Bodge.

“I don’t hardly see how that old hair mattress there is goin’ to be rung in on the deal,” growled Hiram.

“Nor I,” agreed the Cap’n, frankly; “not so fur as the details appear to me just now.  But there’s something about him that gives me hopes.”  He pulled out his wallet, licked his thumb, and peeled off a bill.

“Bodge, so fur’s I can see now, you seem to be a good investment.  I don’t know just yet how much it is goin’ to take to capitalize you, but here’s ten dollars for an option.  You understand now that I’m president of you, and my friend here is sekertary.  And you’re to keep your mouth shut.”

Mr. Bodge agreed with effusive gratitude, and capital went its way.  The inventor chased after them with thumping peg-leg to inquire whether he should first perfect the model of the “cat identifier,” or develop his idea of an automatic chore-doer, started by the rooster tripping a trigger as he descended to take his matutinal sniff of air.

“You just keep in practise with that thing,” commanded the Cap’n, pointing to the cow’s horn.

“I don’t see even yet how you are goin’ to do it,” remarked Hiram, as they separated a half-hour later at Cap’n Sproul’s gate.