knowed more about the pertic’ler points of the office, but outside of that he was the biggist dumb-head I ever see, an’ you know how he left things.  He hadn’t no tack, fer one thing.  Outside of summin’ up figures an’ countin’ money he had a faculty fer gettin’ things t’other-end to that beat all.  I’d tell him a thing, an’ explain it to him two three times over, an’ he’d say ‘Yes, yes,’ an’, scat my ——! when it came to carryin’ on’t out, he hadn’t sensed it a mite—­jest got it which-end-t’other.  An talk!  Wa’al, I think it must ‘a’ ben a kind of disease with him.  He really didn’t mean no harm, mebbe, but he couldn’t no more help lettin’ out anythin’ he knowed, or thought he knowed, than a settin’ hen c’n help settin’.  He kep’ me on tenter-hooks the hull endurin’ time.”

“I should say he was honest enough, was he not?” said John.

“Oh, yes,” replied David with a touch of scorn, “he was honest enough fur ’s money matters was concerned; but he hadn’t no tack, nor no sense, an’ many a time he done more mischief with his gibble-gabble than if he’d took fifty dollars out an’ out.  Fact is,” said David, “the kind of honesty that won’t actually steal ’s a kind of fool honesty that’s common enough; but the kind that keeps a feller’s mouth shut when he hadn’t ought to talk ‘s about the scurcest thing goin’.  I’ll jest tell ye, fer example, the last mess he made.  You know Purse, that keeps the gen’ral store?  Wa’al, he come to me some months ago, on the quiet, an’ said that he wanted to borro’ five hunderd.  He didn’t want to git no indorser, but he’d show me his books an’ give me a statement an’ a chattel morgidge fer six months.  He didn’t want nobody to know ’t he was anyway pushed fer money because he wanted to git some extensions, an’ so on.  I made up my mind it was all right, an’ I done it.  Wa’al, about a month or so after he come to me with tears in his eyes, as ye might say, an’ says, ‘I got somethin’ I want to show ye,’ an’ handed out a letter from the house in New York he had some of his biggist dealin’s with, tellin’ him that they regretted”—­here David gave John a nudge—­“that they couldn’t give him the extensions he ast for, an’ that his paper must be paid as it fell due—­some twelve hunderd dollars.  ’Somebody ’s leaked,’ he says, ‘an’ they’ve heard of that morgidge, an’ I’m in a putty scrape,’ he says.

“‘H’m’m,’ I says, ‘what makes ye think so?’

“‘Can’t be nothin’ else,’ he says; ’I’ve dealt with them people fer years an’ never ast fer nothin’ but what I got it, an’ now to have ’em round up on me like this, it can’t be nothin’ but what they’ve got wind o’ that chattel morgidge,’ he says.

“‘H’m’m,’ I says.  ‘Any o’ their people ben up here lately?’ I says.

“‘That’s jest it,’ he says.  ‘One o’ their travellin’ men was up here last week, an’ he come in in the afternoon as chipper as you please, wantin’ to sell me a bill o’ goods, an’ I put him off, sayin’ that I had a putty big stock, an’ so on, an’ he said he’d see me agin in the mornin’—­you know that sort of talk,’ he says.