“I know,” hastily, “I know.  Well, I tell you, Cap’n Jeth, all’s I wanted to say was this:  What are we goin’ to do with this Development stock of ours?”

“Do with it?  Why, nothin’ at present.  Can’t do anything with it, can we?  All we can do is wait.  It may be one year or three, but some day somebody will have to come to us.  There ain’t a better place for a cold storage fish house on this coast and the Wellmouth Development Company owns that place.”

“Yes, that’s so, that’s so.  But some of us can afford to wait and some can’t.  Now I’ve got more of the Development Company stock than anybody else.  I’ve got five hundred shares, Cap’n Jeth; five hundred shares at twenty dollars a share.  A poor man like me can’t afford to have ten thousand dollars tied up as long’s this is liable to be.  Can he now?  Eh?  Can he, Cap’n?”

“Humph!  Well, I’ve got eight thousand tied up there myself.”

“Ye-es, but it don’t make so much difference to you.  You can afford to wait.  You’ve got a gov’ment job.”

“Ye-es, and from what I hear you may be havin’ a state job pretty soon yourself, Raish.  Well, never mind that.  What is it you’re drivin’ at, anyhow?”

“Why, I tell you, Jeth.  Course you know and I know that this is a perfectly sure investment to anybody that’ll wait.  I can’t afford to wait, that’s what’s the matter.  It kind of run acrost my mind that maybe you’d like to have my holdin’s, my five hundred shares.  I’ll sell ’em to you reasonable.”

“Humph!  I want to know!  What do you call reasonable?”

“I’ll sell ’em to you for—­for—­well, say nineteen dollars a share.”

“Humph!  Don’t bother me any more, Raish.”

“Well, say eighteen dollars a share.  Lord sakes, that’s reasonable enough, ain’t it?”

“Cruise along towards home, Raish.  I’ve talked all the business I want to on Sunday.  Good-by.”

“Look here, Jethro, I—­I’m hard up, I’m desp’rate, pretty nigh.  I’ll let you have my five hundred shares of Wellmouth Development Company for just half what I paid for it—­ten dollars a share.  If you wasn’t my friend, I wouldn’t—­ What are you laughin’ at?”

Galusha Bangs, hiding behind the tomb, understanding nothing of this conversation, yet feeling like an eavesdropper, wished this provoking pair would stop talking and go away.  He heard the light keeper laugh sardonically.

“Ho, ho, ho,” chuckled Hallett.  “You’re a slick article, ain’t you, Raish?  Why, you wooden-headed swab, did you cal’late you was the only one that had heard about the directors’ meetin’ over to the Denboro Trust Company yesterday? I knew the Trust Company folks had decided not to go ahead with the fish storage business just as well as you did, and I heard it just as soon, too. I know they’ve decided to put the twelve hundred shares of Wellmouth Development stock into profit and loss, or to just hang on and see if it ever does come to anything.  But you cal’lated I didn’t know it and that maybe you could unload your five hundred shares on to me at cut rates, eh?  Raish, you’re slick—­but you ain’t bright, not very.”