If it would
only come a good black stormy night and I could get
ashore. You see, they've got spies on me. They've
got a right to come up and buy drinks at the bar
yonder forrard, and they take that chance to bribe
somebody to keep watch on me -- porter or boots or
somebody. If I was to slip ashore without anybody
seeing me, they would know it inside of an hour."
So then he got to wandering along, and pretty soon,
sure enough, he was telling! He was poking along
through his ups and downs, and when he come to that
place he went right along. He says:
"It was a confidence game. We played it on a julery-
shop in St. Louis. What we was after was a couple of
noble big di'monds as big as hazel-nuts, which every-
body was running to see. We was dressed up fine, and
we played it on them in broad daylight. We ordered
the di'monds sent to the hotel for us to see if we
wanted to buy, and when we was examining them we
had paste counterfeits all ready, and THEM was the things
that went back to the shop when we said the water
wasn't quite fine enough for twelve thousand dollars."
"Twelve?thousand?dollars!" Tom says. "Was
they really worth all that money, do you reckon?"
"Every cent of it."
"And you fellows got away with them?"
"As easy as nothing. I don't reckon the julery
people know they've been robbed yet. But it wouldn't
be good sense to stay around St.
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