'My commission's two dollars,' said Mrs. Cashdollar. 'Cash.'

Andrew slowly pulled a wallet from his hip pocket and paid her.

'Our boat's at the Butterfield dock,' said Stephen. 'It's the Eastern Belle.' 'Got a red stripe,' said Andrew. 'End boat.'

'She'll be down in the morning,' said Mrs. Cashdollar. 'Excuse me not getting up, gents. It's the gout troubles me. Good night.'

They went out, Andrew leading.

'What're you looking at him for?' Mrs. Cashdollar asked. 'He ain't nothing but a lump of mud. Now that young feller's got looks see him smile. He'll give you a good time, May - if you want it.'

She had seen the girl's eyes fixed on Andrew's yellow hair as the lamplight picked it out through the darkness in the doorway.

'You get down and get 'em a good breakfast, and you'll start right. Give a man a good breakfast and you won't have to think about him till the next morning. Now go on out. A woman like me's got to get sleep.'

She closed the door after the girl, knocked out her pipe, and took a

'I wonder who they be,' she said to herself as she began to undress. 'I never seen them afore.'

Mrs. Cashdollar never saw them again, but she heard about all three of them from time to time.

II

The two Glenns first ran across each other at an auction in Whitestown. Though they had come into competition over some smaller articles, they had taken no stock in each other until they found themselves and a third man bidding for a heavy work team. The horses were blacks, about eighteen hundred at fifteen hands, and handsome to look at. Andrew, whose passion was cows and horses, hung grimly to the bidding until he had reached one hundred and fifty dollars. Now and then he would turn his eyes from the team and scowl at the other two.

'One twenty-five,' Stephen had said; and Andrew had called out, ‘One fifty,' which was twenty dollars more than he could pay. Stephen had made a grimace and turned his back; but just then the third bidder had said, 'One sixty.'

This was a thin man with a pointed chin and sloping forehead who had been walking about with a heavy driving whip in his hand, much bored until the team was put up.

The auctioneer rubbed his hands together and echoed, ‘One sixty,' in an ecstatic, whispering voice. 'One sixty,'

he repeated. 'Ain't anybody going to raise this gent's bid? Such a team, so cheap; four and five; own brothers! Look at 'em!'

Andrew swallowed hard and muttered, 'One sixty-five,' in his beard, but not loud enough for the auctioneer to hear him.

"Throw in with me,' said a voice at his shoulder, and we'll get him yet.'

He looked down with a sudden gleam in his eye at the little dark man who had been bidding against him a moment before. Stephen smiled eagerly; and all at once a slow grin overspread Andrew's face, showing his big square teeth; a chuckle rose in him; and he threw back his head and opened his mouth and laughed to himself, a deep laugh, which shook him down in his bowels.

'How much?' he asked.

'I bid one twenty-five,' said Stephen, grinning over the other's laugh.

The auctioneer was leaning beseechingly in Andrew's direction, his pudgy hands moving unctuously, his face sweating as he stretched his remarks to give Andrew time.

'Own brothers,' he was saying. 'Bred in this town. Equal to any weight. Up to any haul. Kind. Gentle. There ain't a kick into them. Set on their hocks,' he invited. 'Look at them quarters. There's power. Short backs. Look at them legs run your hand down them. What do you feel?' he said to the hostler, who had complied with his request. 'Nothing!' he answered himself. Clean and sweet . . .'

The man with the pointed chin cracked his whip savagely.

"They're mine,' he said. 'No stretching! They was mine two minutes ago, damn you!'

'Going...' cried the auctioneer. 'Look at them shoulders! Going There ain't a sweeter set of legs in this state! You've see how they match as a pair, gents?'

'One seventy-five,' said Andrew emnly, his big hands quivering delight.

The hot noon sun shone str down on the group in the the crowd had cleared for them. touched the coats of the blacks a gun-metal sheen.

'Ninety!' There was a snap in voice of the man with the poi chin, and he cracked his whip so the pair threw up their heads gathered their haunches under the

'You shut up with that whip!' the hostler, running his hand over withers of the nearest horse.

"Two hundred,' said Andrew, an took off his hat.

The crowd shifted round them great amusement, and men eased sweat out of their suspenders their thumbs.

'Five,' said the man with the poin chin.

"Ten,' said Andrew.
"Twelve.'

'Fifteen.'

'Sixteen.'

The auctioneer rubbed his ha together. 'Two sixteen,' he whimper 'Dollars. Cash.'

'You'll get him now,' Steph whispered. "Twenty-five and h

run.'

'Not all to once,' rumbled Andr 'I want to make him wiggle.'

It was his first experience in ha dling what seemed to him unlimit capital.

'Seventeen,' he said.
'Eighteen.'

'Nineteen.'
'Twenty.'
"Twenty-one.'

The other drew a long sobbi breath, tried to swear, choked, a pushed his way through the crowd, t long lash of his whip trailing alo the ground after him.

'Two twenty-one!' cried the auctioneer. 'Going. . . What a team for the money! Ain't nobody going to say twenty-two?'

'You shut up!' Andrew growled. 'Going... Gone!' His mallet came down with a smack on the rail of his booth. "This team is sold for two hundred and twenty-one dollars to the big gent with the yellow hair.'

Mixed laughter and applause rose from the crowd.

Andrew went over to the team and laid a soothing hand along their backs and grinned and grinned.

Stephen came after him. 'Well,' he said with his quick smile, 'they're ours. I calculated sure he would n't go over twenty.'

Andrew still grinned.

'Saved four dollars making him wiggle.'

He ran his hand caressingly all over the horse, which twitched its skin with enjoyment.

'They're worth the price,' the hostler vouchsafed. 'I've see 'em when they was foaled and watched them this six year. They're a pretty team to haul with and used to handling boats.'

'I thought they was four and five!' exclaimed Stephen.

Andrew gave him a pitying smile. The hostler spat.

'Was there ever a team auctioned which wasn't four and five if they was under ten and eleven?' he asked aggrievedly.

He thrust the lead ropes into Andrew's hand and shambled off with a friendly slap on the rump of the near horse as he passed. The team looked after him.

'Well, now they're ours, what're we going to do with 'em?'

I got a boat this morning,' said Andrew, running his hand down his nose and over his beard, and I come up here to buy a team. I was aiming

to boat it a season. There's no pay to my farm; it ain't no land for growth. So I sold it. I reckon I'll have to take you on to come with me as a partner.'

'Suits me,' said Stephen.

Andrew looked down at him, and, Stephen being so much younger and having that soft smiling look in his eyes, he felt a paternal kindliness overwhelming him. He had felt much the same way toward a heifer he had once had. She was the best blood he had on his farm, and she had gentle eyes.

'Suits me,' he said.

They settled down to life on Andrew's boat, the Eastern Belle one of the old bullhead Erie boats of eighty feet, with a well-built cabin aft and four stalls under the lift hatch forward. Most of their hauling took them westward, for they got pretty steady work from the Butterfield chain of feed mills; and they got to know Syracuse and Rochester and even Buffalo, and the points in between.

Andrew managed the culinary end. In his life alone on his farm he had learned to cook potatoes, and flapjacks, eggs, and coffee eggs, and coffee-good enough cooking for a man alone, for whom eating becomes part of the day's chores; but with someone to talk to over the food, there is more need for variety. It irked them both-Stephen especially, who was useless in such matters, and, consequently, particular.

He was city bred, born in New York, where he had acquired a grace which amazed Andrew but left him full of admiration. Beyond a certain gift and liking for horses, Stephen was of no value to the running of the boat. He went off as soon as they tied up at a town or city dock and moved about scraping intimate acquaintances with what women attracted his notice. He was eminently successful; he had a gift

for clothes as well as his soft eyes and eager smile to help him. Andrew stayed aboard and growled to himself, for he had the heavy moral sense of inexperience. But his feeling of fatherliness grew deeper; and other men learned that to quarrel with Stephen meant quarreling with Andrew.

Stephen returned his ponderous affection with a bantering good nature, verging at times upon contempt. He listened attentively to Andrew's slow lectures on thrift and laughed them off with spending his share of the earnings of the Eastern Belle. It became a weekly ritual between them. In his way, each derived a certain pleasure from it.

But the cooking was another matter; the food palled. Stephen suggested a cook. Andrew scoffed at the extravagance until Stephen, appreciating his hold over his partner, began taking his meals in stores along the towpath when he could, and eating ashore altogether while they stayed in the larger ports.

A few weeks of this became unbearable for Andrew. One evening in Utica, as Stephen was leaving the boat, he suggested hiring a cook.

'It'll cost a lot,' said Stephen with lugubrious hesitation.

'It'll save you buying your meals. She'll know better where to save than I do,' said Andrew.

'I guess that's so. Still, you got to pay her a salary.'

'I'll ask the 'keep over to Bentley's what's right. Joe would do right by me there.'

Stephen shook his head and mumbled to himself in Andrew's sourest manner, and grinned to see Andrew's heedlessness.

'Joe'll know what's right,' said Andrew.

Joe did, but it amused him to mention a top wage for Andrew's benefit.

Being accustomed to all busines volving womenfolk, Stephen scen discrepancy.

'If you say fifteen dollars to 1 up above,' Joe whispered to 'you'll get a danged good cook. come in yesterday, and she's gree the canal'; and he gave an attrac description of a young girl, v Andrew down the bar ruminated his Black Strap. Fifteen dollar month was more than he had pla to spend.

But he followed Stephen upst and, between them and Mrs. C dollar, they secured the services May Friendly.

III

She came aboard early, and from bunk Stephen heard her chucking w in the stove. Andrew, whose job it been to build the fire and put on coffee, still snored softly.

They slept in a small cubicle bel the cabin, directly under the ste man's place. What light and air th was came in through small ventila slits just under the deck. It was a little hole, with the planks two feet o your head, so that you had to sit carefully.

Stephen got up quietly and w out into the cabin with his shirt un toned and his shoes in his hand. He a drink of water from the barrel un the short steps and looked over dipper at May while he drank. She dressed in a red gingham work dr and the sunlight coming through small high windows at the side slan across her back and made a sn shadow between her shoulders.

'Good morning,' Stephen said. She gave him a cool glance out of black eyes, which were pointed fin at the outer corners.

'Good morning,' she said. 'When you mostly eat?'