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“Oh, shut up,” said Davis, “you’re always going back on things, and you haven’t it in you to scrag a chicken, anyhow; always serving out that parson’s dope about it not paying to run crooked.”

“Nor it don’t,” said the moralist. “There ain’t enough mugs in the world, as I’ve told you more than twice. I don’t say there ain’t enough, but they’re too spread about—now if you could get them all congeriated into one place, I wouldn’t be behind you in waltzing in with a clear conscience an’ takin’ their hides—but there ain’t such a place—— ’Nother thing that queers the pitch is the way sharps let on to be mugs. Look at Clayton.”

“What about Clayton?”

“Well, look at him. In we sails to that pearl shop and there we finds him on the beach. Looked like the king of the mugs, didn’t he, with his big, round face and them blue-gooseberry eyes. ‘Here’s a sealed lagoon for you,’ says he, ‘I’m done with it; got all the pearls I want and am only wishful to get away; take it for nix, I only want your ship in exchange, and we fall to the deal and off he goes.’