"Fifty," said Dave promptly.
"He said he wouldn't take less than ninety," retorted Hazelton.
"Ninety dollars," guessed Tom.
"Fellows," laughed Dick, "at one time on the train I was so downhearted and glum over the chances of a trade that I believe I would have jumped at fifty dollars. Then I remembered my promise not to take less than ninety dollars. With that I soared to a hundred dollars, then down, by degrees, to seventy. But my promise pulled me back to ninety."
"It wasn't exactly a promise," Dave broke in. "Anyway, Dick, it wasn't the kind of promise that had to be kept."
"Half the time I felt that the promise had to be kept, and the other half of the time I felt that it might better be broken," Prescott went on, laughingly. "Just as I reached Porthampton, however, and saw all the fine summer homes there, my figures began to rise. I realized, of course, that a birch bark canoe is a good deal of a rarity in these days; that such a boat hasn't anything like a hard-and-fast, staple value. A birch bark canoe, in other words, is worth what it will bring."
"And no more," nodded Dave Darrin. "So you were wise to take the fifty dollars."
"Who said that I took fifty dollars for the canoe?" Dick smiled back.
"What did you get?" insisted Harry Hazelton, his impatience increasing with every minute.
"Do you really want to know what I got?" teased Dick.