“No, this slip on which two words are written.  He will want one more word, but before you give it to him you must ask for your ten dollars.  You’ll get them,” he answered in response to a glance of suspicion from Sweetwater.  Sweetwater was convinced that he had got hold of another suspicious job.  It made him a little serious.  “Do I look like a go-between for crooks?” he asked himself.  “I’m afraid I’m not so much of a success as I thought myself.”  But he said to the man before him:  “Ten dollars is small pay for such business.  Twenty-five would be nearer the mark.”

“Very well, he will give you twenty-five dollars.  I forgot that ten dollars was but little in advance of your expenses.”

“Twenty-five if I find him, and he is in funds.  What if I don’t?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Except your ticket; that I’ll give you.”

Sweetwater did not know what to say.  Like the preceding job it might be innocent and it might not.  And then, he did not like going to Boston, where he was liable to meet more than one who knew him.

“There is no harm in the business,” observed the other, carelessly, pushing a glass of whiskey which had just been served him toward Sweetwater.  “I would even be willing to do it myself, if I could leave New Bedford to-night, but I can’t.  Come!  It’s as easy as crooking your elbow.”

“Just now you said it wasn’t,” growled Sweetwater, drinking from his glass.  “But no matter about that, go ahead, I’ll do it.  Shall I have to buy other clothes?”

“I’d buy a new pair of trousers,” suggested the other.  “The rest you can get in Boston.  You don’t want to be too much in evidence, you know.”

Sweetwater agreed with. him.  To attract attention was what he most dreaded.  “When does the train start?” he asked.

The young man told him.

“Well, that will give me time to buy what I want.  Now, what are your instructions?”

The young man gave him a memorandum, containing four addresses.  “You will find him at one of these places,” said he.  “And now to know your man when you see him.  He is a large, handsome fellow, with red hair and a moustache like the devil.  He has been hurt, and wears his left hand in a sling, but he can play cards, and will be found playing cards, and in very good company too.  You will have to use your discretion in approaching him.  When once he sees this bit of paper, all will be easy.  He knows what these two words mean well enough, and the third one, the one that is worth twenty-five dollars to you, is Frederick.”

Sweetwater, who had drunk half his glass, started so at this word, which was always humming in his brain, that he knocked over his tumbler and spilled what was left in it.

“I hope I won’t forget that word,” he remarked, in a careless tone, intended to carry off his momentary show of feeling.

“If you do, then don’t expect the twenty-five dollars,” retorted the other, finishing his own glass, but not offering to renew Sweetwater’s.