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 driver. Half a dozen lengthy bamboo fishing-poles projected from the wagon’s rear.

“You’re here, Bob,” said Judge Archinard, Mr. Robert’s old friend and schoolmate. “It’s going to be a royal day for fishing. I thought you said—why, did n’t you bring along the stuff?”

The president of the Weymouth Bank took off his hat and rumpled his gray locks.

“Well, Ben, to tell you the truth, there’s an infernally presumptuous old nigger belonging in my family that broke up the arrangement. He came down to the depot and vetoed the whole proceeding. He means all right, and—well, I reckon he is right. Somehow, he had found out what I had along—though I hid it in the bank vault and sneaked it out at midnight. I reckon he has noticed that I’ve been indulging a little more than a gentleman should, and he laid for me with some reaching arguments.

“I’m going to quit drinking,” Mr. Robert concluded. “I’ve come to the conclusion that a man can’t keep it up and be quite what he’d like to be—‘pure and fearless and without reproach’—that’s the way old Bushrod quoted it.”

“Well, I’ll have to admit,” said the judge, thoughtfully, as they climbed into the waggon, “that the old darky’s argument can’t conscientiously be overruled.”

“Still,” said Mr. Robert, with a ghost of a sigh, “there was two quarts of the finest old silk-velvet Bourbon in that satchel you ever wet your lips with.”