don't git mad; didn't you have it in your mind to hook the money and hide it?"
The duke never said nothing for a little bit; then he says:
"Well—I don't care if I did, I didn't do it, anyway. But you not only had it in mind to do it, but you done it."
"I wisht I may never die if I done it, duke, and that's honest. I won't say I warn't goin' to do it, because I was; but you—I mean somebody got in ahead o' me."
"It's a lie! You done it, and you got to say you done it, or——"
The king begun to gurgle, and then he gasps out:
"'Nough!— I own up!"
I was very glad to hear him say that, it made me feel much more easier than what I was feeling before. So the duke took his hands off, and says:
"If you ever deny it again, I'll drown you. It's well for you to set there and blubber like a baby—it's fitten for you, after the way you've acted. I never see such an old ostrich for wanting to gobble everything—and I a trusting you all the time, like you was my own father. You ought to been ashamed of yourself to stand by and hear it saddled onto a lot of poor niggers and you never say a word for 'em. It makes me feel ridiculous to think I was soft enough to believe that rubbage. Cuss you, I can see, now, why you was so anxious to make up the deffesit—you wanted to get what money I'd got out of the Nonesuch and one thing or another, and scoop it all!"
The king says, timid, and still a snuffling:
"Why, duke, it was you that said make up the deffersit, it warn't me."
"Dry up! I don't want to hear no more out of you!" says the duke. "And now you see what you got by it. They've got all their own money back, and all of ourn but a shekel or two, besides. G'long to bed—and don't you deffersit me no more deffersits, long 's you live!"
So the king sneaked into the wigwam, and took to his bottle for comfort; and before long the duke tackled his bottle; and so in about a half an hour they was as thick as thieves again, and the tighter they got, the lovinger they got; and
