a lamp reading his evening
paper; Mrs. Leighton could be heard in colloquy with the cook below, and
Alma had gone to her room. She beckoned Fulkerson with the hand
outstretched behind her, and said, "Go and ask him."

"Alone!" he palpitated.

"Oh, what a cyowahd!" she cried, and went with him. "Ah suppose you'll
want me to tell him aboat it."

"Well, I wish you'd begin, Miss Woodburn," he said. "The fact is, you
know, I've been over it so much I'm kind of sick of the thing."

Miss Woodburn advanced and put her hand on her father's shoulder. "Look
heah, papa! Mr. Fulkerson wants to ask you something, and he wants me to
do it fo' him."

The colonel looked up through his glasses with the sort of ferocity
elderly men sometimes have to put on in order to keep their glasses from
falling off. His daughter continued: "He's got into an awful difficulty
with his edito' and his proprieto', and he wants you to pacify them."

"I do not know whethah I understand the case exactly," said the colonel,
"but Mr. Fulkerson may command me to the extent of my ability."

"You don't understand it aftah what Ah've said?" cried the girl. "Then Ah
don't see but what you'll have to explain it you'self, Mr. Fulkerson."

"Well, Miss Woodburn has been so luminous about it, colonel," said
Fulkerson, glad of the joking shape she had given the affair, "that I can
only throw in a little side-light here and there."

The colonel listened as Fulkerson went on, with a grave diplomatic
satisfaction. He felt gratified, honored, even, he said, by Mr.
Fulkerson's appeal to him; and probably it gave him something of the high
joy that an affair of honor would have brought him in the days when he
had arranged for meetings between gentlemen. Next to bearing a challenge,
this work of composing a difficulty must have been grateful. But he gave
no outward sign of his satisfaction in making a resume of the case so as
to get the points clearly in his mind.

"I was afraid, sir," he said, with the state due to the serious nature of
the facts, "that Mr. Lindau had given Mr. Dryfoos offence by some of his
questions at the dinner-table last night."

"Perfect red rag to a bull," Fulkerson put in; and then he wanted to
withdraw his words at the colonel's look of displeasure.

"I have no reflections to make upon Mr. Landau," Colonel Woodburn
continued, and Fulkerson felt grateful to him for going on; "I do not
agree with Mr. Lindau; I totally disagree with him on so