"'Boys, here's where I cashes right in. You sets right to me for the
schooner and the cargo. But you goes to Palachi's agent over 'crost the
bay for instructions and directions.'

"'But,' says the Englisher, Strokher, 'this bettin' a blind play don't
suit our hand. Why not' says he, 'make right up to Mister Palachi
hisself?'

"'No,' says Ryder, 'No, boys. Ye can't. The Signor is lying as low as a
toad in a wheeltrack these days, because o' the pryin' and meddlin'
disposition o' the local authorities. No,' he says, 'ye must have your
palaver with the agent which she is a woman,' an' thereon I groans low
and despairin'.

"So soon as he mentions 'feemale' I _knowed_ trouble was in the
atmosphere. An' right there is where I sure looses my presence o' mind.
What I should a-done was to say, 'Mister Ryder, Hardenberg and gents
all: You're good boys an' you drinks and deals fair, an' I loves you all
with a love that can never, never die for the terms o' your natural
lives, an' may God have mercy on your souls; _but_ I ain't keepin' case
on this 'ere game no longer. Woman and me is mules an' music. We ain't
never made to ride in the same go-cart Good-by.' That-all is wot I
should ha' said. But I didn't. I walked right plum into the sloo, like
the mudhead that I was, an' got mired for fair--jes as I might a-knowed
I would.

"Well, Ryder gives us a address over across the bay an' we fair hykes
over there all along o' as crool a rain as ever killed crops. We finds
the place after awhile, a lodgin'-house all lorn and loony, set down all
by itself in the middle o' some real estate extension like a tepee in a