"'Mr. Williams,' says the man, kind of pleadin', 'ain't you goin' to pay me the rest of my month's wages?'
"Williams told him he wa'n't, and added trimmin's to make it emphatic.
"I started the engine and we moved out at a good clip. All at once that hired man runs to the end of the wharf and calls after us.
"'All right for you, you fat-head!' he yells. 'You'll be sorry for what you done to me.'
"I cal'late the boss would have liked to go back and lick him, but I was hired to go a-fishin', not to watch a one-sided prize fight, and I thought 'twas high time we started.
"The name of that launch was the Shootin' Star, and she certainly lived up to it. 'Twas one of them slick, greasy days, with no sea worth mentionin' and we biled along fine. We had to, because the cod ledge is a good many mile away, 'round Sandy P'int out to sea, and, judgin' by what I'd seen of Fatty so fur, I wa'n't hankerin' to spend more time with him than was necessary. More'n that, there was fog signs showin'.
"'When was you figgerin' on gettin' back, Mr. Williams?' I asked him.
"'When I've caught as many fish as I want to,' he says. 'I told that housekeeper of mine that I'd be back when I got good and ready; it might be to-night and it might be ten days from now. "If I ain't back in a week you can hunt me up," I told her; "but not before. And that goes." I've got HER trained all right. She knows me. It's a pity if a man can't be independent of females.'
"I knew consider'ble many men that was subjects for pity, 'cordin' to that rule. But I wa'n't in for no week's cruise, and I told him so. He said of course not; we'd be home that evenin'.
"The Shootin' Star kept slippin' along. 'Twas a beautiful mornin' and, after a spell, it had its effect, even on a crippled disposition like that banker man's. He lit up a cigar and begun to get more sociable, in his way. Commenced to ask me questions about myself.
"By and by he says: 'Berry, I suppose you figger that it's a smart thing to get ten dollars out of me for a trip like this, hey?'
"'Not if it's to last a week, I don't,' says I.
"'It's your lookout if it does,' he says prompt. 'You get ten for takin' me out and back. If you ain't back on time 'tain't my fault.'
"'Unless this craft breaks down,' I says.
"''Twon't break down. I looked after that. My motto is to look out for number one every time, and it's a mighty good motto. At any rate, it's made my money for me.'
"He went on, preachin' about business shrewdness and how it paid, and how mean and tricky in little deals we Rubes was, and yet we didn't appreciate how to manage big things, till I got kind of sick of it.
"'Look here, Mr. Williams,' says I, 'you know how I make my money--what little I do make--or you say you do. Now, if it ain't a sassy question, how did you make yours?'
"Well, he made his by bein' shrewd and careful and always lookin' out for number one. 'Number one' was his hobby. I gathered that the heft of his spare change had come from dickers in stocks and bonds.
"'Humph!' says I. 'Well, speakin' of tricks and meanness, I've allers heard tell that there was some of them things hitched to the tail of the stock market. What makes the stock market price of--well, of wheat, we'll say?'
"That was regulated, so he said, by the law of supply and demand.
If a feller had all the wheat there was and another chap had to have some or starve, why, the first one had a right to gouge t'other chap's last cent away from him afore he let it go.
"'That's legitimate,' he says. 'That's cornerin' the market. Law of supply and demand exemplified.'
"''Cordin' to that law,' says I, 'when you was so set on fishin' to-day and hunted me up to run your boat here--'cause I was about the only chap who could run it and wa'n't otherwise busy--I'd ought to have charged you twenty dollars instead of ten.'
"'Sure you had,' he says, grinnin'. 'But you weren't shrewd enough to grasp the situation and do it. Now the deal's closed and it's too late.'
"He went on talkin' about 'pools' and deals' and such. How prices of this stock and that was shoved up a-purpose till a lot of folks had put their money in it and then was smashed flat so's all hands but the 'poolers' would be what he called 'squeezed out,' and the gang would get their cash. That was legitimate, too--'high finance,' he said.
"'But how about the poor folks that had their savin's in them stocks,' I asks, 'and don't know high financin'? Where's the law of supply and demand come in for them?'
"He laughed. 'They supply the suckers and the demand for money,' says he.
