"Away back in the good old times of the West—when fortunes were made and lost in a day, and one went to bed a pauper and woke a millionaire, or vice versâ—I was cruising round, looking up new mines with an old sea-captain, named Rogers. We were coming down from Virginia City on the stage, and late one evening we got into ——, and found everything in the shape of accommodation occupied. It so happened, however, that Rogers met a friend called Bob Malone, who kept a livery stable there, and he invited us to his place, and put us up for the night. The next morning we hired a buggy from him, to drive out and look at a new 'prospect' that we had some idea of buying, and coming back the horse ran away, and broke a little iron bar under the buggy—did, in fact, about ten dollars mischief to it. The following day we got a room at one of the saloons, and stopped about a week longer there. In the course of that time we tried on two or three occasions to get Malone's bill for damages. But he put us off, and put us off, saying that 'it didn't matter;' 'he had been too busy to attend to it;' 'there wasn't any hurry about it,' and so forth. And it wasn't until just as we were absolutely going off on the stage, that he came up and gave it to the Captain. We were in a hurry, the coach was starting, and there wasn't any time to look into it, so Rogers glanced at the total and paid it. We pulled out, and got on the road, and by-and-by I leant forward to the Captain, who sat on the box-seat, and asked him what I had to give him for my share of the bill. Then he remembered it, and fetched it out, and looked it through. This was how it ran:

Dollars.
"To Carpenter's Work on Buggy 20
To Blacksmith's Work on Buggy20
To Painter's Work on Buggy20
To Damage to Buggy20
——
Total 80
====

"Well, the old fellow swore by all the gods of sea or land, and all the ports that he had ever been swindled in, that it was the stiffest bill that he had struck yet. And even after I had paid him my half of it, every now and then as we went along, he would pull it out of his pocket, and take another look at it. But that didn't seem to do him any good, for the more he studied it the madder he got, until finally, when we stopped for lunch, the first thing he did was to get some paper, and write Malone a letter. I forget how it ran, but the gist of it was that, 'In view of the extravagant total of the bill, he thought that Mr. Malone had taken the opportunity afforded by the injury done to his buggy to charge in a delicate manner for the hospitality that we had received from him. But that since Mr. Malone was a friend of his, not of mine, and he (the Captain) did not like to charge me for hospitality which he had indirectly been the means of offering me, he should be glad to know the exact state of the case, etc., etc.'

"Some time afterwards, I happened to be going up to —— again, so I got the bill from Rogers, and when I had leisure just dropped in to call on Malone. 'By the way, Malone,' said I, in the course of conversation, 'that was a devil of a bill that you slipped on us the other day.'

"That started him! 'Of all the ungentlemanly and disgraceful letters that he had ever seen, heard, or read of, the Captain's was the worst,' he said. 'He had never been so insulted in his life. After all his kindness to us—after the hospitality that he had tendered us—after taking us into the bosom of his family circle, to have a letter written to him in such terms was a perfect outrage! He couldn't have believed it, if he hadn't seen it.'

"'Well,' said I, 'that depends, of course, on how you look at it. Now, Dick Rose wants to give me forty dollars for that bill.' (Rose was the rival livery-stable keeper in the place.)

"'The —— he does! What for?'

"'Why, he wants to paste it up on his gate, and label it "Bob Malone's Bill," for the boys to come and look at; it would be sure to get into the papers, and there'd be no end of chaff about it. Of course it would be an advertisement for Rose.' 'But you ain't going to sell it to him?' 'Why not?' 'What, sell another chap my bill?' 'Why shouldn't I,' said I, 'if I can get half the total for it?' 'Oh!—well, I am——Well! Well, there, if it comes to that, I guess I can give as much for my bill as anybody else. —— me if I am going to have anybody buy a bill of mine!' 'But I didn't say that I was going to take forty dollars for it,' I said. 'The —— you didn't! What do you want, then?' 'Well, if you want to buy that bill, I guess I could let you have it for sixty dollars; but you'll have to make up your mind about it at once.' The end of it was that Malone brought out the money, and I handed him the bill. I gave the old Captain thirty dollars, and I think he was better pleased with it than he would have been if he had struck a big Bonanza."

Early morning saw us under way in different directions. B. and Mac rowed to a point two miles down the shore of the lake; Texas struck inland for a little lake in the woods.