"Just the same!" "I can't," said he.

"But--there's nothing unusual in that; some correspondent of mine might have handed it to him--torn it off one of my letters, do you see?
I've correspondents in a great many seaports and mercantile centres--both here and in America." "These men will appear to have come from Central America," I remarked.
"They'd seem to have been employed, one way or another, on that Panama Canal affair that there's been so much in the papers about these last few years.

You'd notice that in the accounts, Mr.Smeaton ?" "I did," he replied.

"And it interested me, because I'm from those parts myself--I was born there." He said that as if this fact was of no significance.

But the news made me prick up my ears.
"Do you tell me that!" said I."Where, now, if it's a fair question ?" "New Orleans--near enough, anyway, to those parts," he answered.