t
know how strong he is when angry. Such muscles!

"He punished the cook until he begged for mercy and promised to do
better. But as soon as he was on his feet he tried to _stab_ my husband
with a bread-knife. Fancy! Mr. Stott took this away from him, also, and
ran him down the road with it. He ran him for seven miles--_seven
miles_, mind you! The cook was nearly dead when Mr. Stott let up on him.
I had to _drag_ this story from my husband, little by little. But wasn't
it exciting?"

Mr. Cone, who never had thought of Mr. Stott as such a warrior, tried to
visualize the episode, and though he failed to do so he was greatly
impressed by it.

He stood for some time after Mrs. Stott had left him, reflecting
enviously that his life was dull and uneventful, and that he must seem a
poor stick to the heroes and heroines of such adventures. He wished that
he could think of some incident in his past to match these tales of
valour, but as he looked back the only thing that occurred to him was
the occasion upon which the laundress had stolen the cooking sherry and
gone to sleep in her chemise on the front veranda. She had fought like a
tiger when the patrol wagon came for her, and he had been the one to
hold her feet as she was carried to it. At the time he had been
congratulated upon the able and fearless manner in which he had met the
emergency, but a bout with an intoxicated laundress, though it had its
dangers, seemed a piffling affair as compared to a hand-to-hand combat
with a grizzly.

Gazing absently through the doorway and comforting himself by thinking
that perhaps he, too, had latent courage which would rise to heights of
heroism in propitious circumstances, he did not see Miss Eyester, who
had come in the side entrance, until she stood before him.

He had not expected Miss Eyester, because she was usually employed
during the winter, and it was only when a well-to-do relative sent her a
check that she could afford a few weeks in Florida. But Miss Eyester was
one of his favourites, and he immediately expressed the hope that she
was to stay the entire season, while he noticed that she was wearing a
mounted bear-claw for a hat-pin.

"No," she replied, blushing.

Not until then had Mr. Cone observed the Montana diamond flashing on her
finger.

"Ah-h?" He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

Miss Eyester nodded.

"In January."

"A Western millionaire, I venture?" he suggested playfully.

"A stockman."

"Indeed