Very proudly Pete turned back the lapel of his coat and distended the chest on which shone his nickel-plated badge of office. Duncan examined it with grave admiration.
"It's beautiful," he said with a sigh. "Here."
Gingerly, Pete grasped the bills, thumbed them over to make sure they were real, and bolted as for his life, his coat-tails level on the breeze.
There floated back to Duncan and old Sam his valedictory: "Wal, I'll be damned!"
With a short, quiet laugh Duncan made as though to go out to the back-yard, where the new stock was being delivered, having been carted up from the station through the alley—thereby doing away with the necessity of cluttering up the store with a débris of packing. His primal instinct of the moment was to get right out of that with all the expedition practicable. He didn't want to be alone with old Sam another second. The essential insanity of which he had just done was patent; there was no excuse for it, and he was like to suffer severely as a consequence. But he wasn't sorry, and he did not want to be thanked.
"I'm going," he said hurriedly, "to find me a hatchet and knock the stuffing out of some of those packing-cases. Want to get all that truck indoors before nightfall, you know——"
But old Sam wasn't to be put off by any such obvious subterfuge as that. He put himself in front of Duncan.
"Nat, my boy," he said, tremulous, "I can't let this go through—I can't allow you——"
"There, now!" Duncan told him, unconcernedly yet kindly, "don't say anything more. It's over and done with."