Curly Jim filled the glasses and had the pleasure of seeing four dollars’ worth of whisky disappear, one dollar’s worth of which he punished himself—­O’Brien insisted that he should drink as frequently as his guests.

“Better take the money now,” Leclaire argued.  “Take you two years to dig it out the hole, an’ all that time you might be hatchin’ teeny little baby ostriches an’ pulling feathers out the big ones.”

O’Brien considered the proposition and nodded approval.  Curly Jim looked gratefully at Leclaire and refilled the glasses.

“Hold on there!” spluttered Mucluc Charley, whose tongue was beginning to wag loosely and trip over itself.  “As your father confessor—­there I go—­as your brother—­O hell!” He paused and collected himself for another start.  “As your frien’—­business frien’, I should say, I would suggest, rather—­I would take the liberty, as it was, to mention—­I mean, suggest, that there may be more ostriches . . .  O hell!” He downed another glass, and went on more carefully.  “What I’m drivin’ at is . . . what am I drivin’ at?” He smote the side of his head sharply half a dozen times with the heel of his palm to shake up his ideas.  “I got it!” he cried jubilantly.  “Supposen there’s slathers more’n ten thousand dollars in that hole!”

O’Brien, who apparently was all ready to close the bargain, switched about.

“Great!” he cried.  “Splen’d idea.  Never thought of it all by myself.”  He took Mucluc Charley warmly by the hand.  “Good frien’!  Good ’s’ciate!” He turned belligerently on Curly Jim.  “Maybe hundred thousand dollars in that hole.  You wouldn’t rob your old frien’, would you, Curly?  Course you wouldn’t.  I know you—­better’n yourself, better’n yourself.  Le’s have another:  We’re good frien’s, all of us, I say, all of us.”

And so it went, and so went the whisky, and so went Curly Jim’s hopes up and down.  Now Leclaire argued in favour of immediate sale, and almost won the reluctant O’Brien over, only to lose him to the more brilliant counter-argument of Mucluc Charley.  And again, it was Mucluc Charley who presented convincing reasons for the sale and Percy Leclaire who held stubbornly back.  A little later it was O’Brien himself who insisted on selling, while both friends, with tears and curses, strove to dissuade him.  The more whiskey they downed, the more fertile of imagination they became.  For one sober pro or con they found a score of drunken ones; and they convinced one another so readily that they were perpetually changing sides in the argument.

The time came when both Mucluc Charley and Leclaire were firmly set upon the sale, and they gleefully obliterated O’Brien’s objections as fast as he entered them.  O’Brien grew desperate.  He exhausted his last argument and sat speechless.  He looked pleadingly at the friends who had deserted him.  He kicked Mucluc Charley’s shins under the table, but that graceless hero immediately unfolded a new and most logical reason for the sale.  Curly Jim got pen and ink and paper and wrote out the bill of sale.  O’Brien sat with pen poised in hand.