in Kansas.
You can inquire about any of the rest of us from anybody in old
Smoky Town, and get satisfactory replies. Did you ever run across
that story about the captain of the whaler who tried to make a
sailor say his prayers?' says I.

"'It occurs to me that I have never been so fortunate,' says the
colonel.

"So I told it to him. Laugh! I was wishing to myself that he was a
customer. What a bill of glass I'd sell him! And then he says:

"'The relating of anecdotes and humorous occurrences has always seemed
to me, Mr. Pescud, to be a particularly agreeable way of promoting
and perpetuating amenities between friends. With your permission, I
will relate to you a fox-hunting story with which I was personally
connected, and which may furnish you some amusement.'

"So he tells it. It takes forty minutes by the watch. Did I laugh?
Well, say! When I got my face straight he calls in old Pete, the
superannuated darky, and sends him down to the hotel to bring up my
valise. It was Elmcroft for me while I was in the town.

"Two evenings later I got a chance to speak a word with Miss Jessie
alone on the porch while the colonel was thinking up another story.

"'It's going to be a fine evening,' says I.

"'He's coming,' says she. 'He's going to tell you, this time, the
story about the old negro and the green watermelons. It always comes
after the one about the Yankees and the game rooster. There was
another time,' she goes on, 'that you nearly got left--it was at
Pulaski City.'

"'Yes,' says I, 'I remember. My foot slipped as I was jumping on the
step, and I nearly tumbled off.'

"'I know,' says she. 'And--and I--_I was afraid you had, John A. I
was afraid you had._'

"And then she skips into the house through one of the big windows."

IV

"Coketown!" droned the porter, making his way through the slowing car.

Pescud gathered his hat and baggage with the leisurely promptness of
an old traveller.

"I married her a year ago," said John. "I told you I built a house in
the East End. The belted--I mean the colonel--is there, too. I find
him waiting at the gate whenever I get back from a trip to hear any
new story I might have picked up on the road."

I glanced out of the window. Coketown was nothing more than a ragged
hillside dotted with a score of black dismal huts propped up against
dreary mounds of slag and clinkers. It rained in slanting torrents,
too, and the rills foamed and splashed down through the black