. Come, read it
out, and tell me what you think."

Macavoy took the paper, and in a large, judicial way, read slowly:

"On demand, for value received, I promise to pay to... IDA HILTON... or
order, meself, Tim Macavoy, standin' seven foot three on me bare fut,
wid interest at nothin' at all."

Macavoy ended with a loud smack of the lips. "McGuire!" he said, and
nothing more.

McGuire was his strongest expression. In the most important moments
of his career he had said it, and it sounded deep, strange, and more
powerful than many usual oaths. A moment later he said again "McGuire!"
Then he read the paper once more out loud. "What's that, me Frinchman?"
he asked. "What Ballzeboob's tricks are y'at now?"

Pierre was complacently eyeing his handiwork on the saddle. He now
settled back with his shoulders to the wall, and said: "See, then, it's
a little promissory note for a wedding-gift to Ida. When she says some
day, 'Tim Macavoy, I want you to do this or that, or to go here or
there, or to sell you or trade you, or use you for a clothes-horse, or a
bridge over a canyon, or to hold up a house, or blow out a prairie-fire,
or be my second husband,' you shall say, 'Here I am'; and you shall
travel from Heaven to Halifax, but you shall come at the call of this
promissory."

Pierre's teeth glistened behind a smile as he spoke, and Macavoy broke
into a roar of laughter. "Black's the white o' yer eye," he said at
last, "an' a joke's a joke. Seven fut three I am, an' sound av wind an'
limb--an' a weddin'-gift to that swate rose o' the valley! Aisy, aisy,
Pierre. A bit o' foolin' 'twas ye put on the paper, but truth I'll make
it, me cock o' the walk. That's me gift to her an' Hilton, an' no other.
An' a dab wid red wax it shall have, an' what more be the word o' Freddy
Tarlton the lawyer?"

"You're a great man," said Pierre with a touch of gentle irony, for his
natural malice had no play against the huge ex-king of his own making.
With these big creatures--he had connived with several in his time--he
had ever been superior, protective, making them to feel that they were
as children beside him. He looked at Macavoy musingly, and said to
himself: "Well, why not? If it is a joke, then it is a joke; if it is a
thing to make the world stand still for a minute sometime, so much the
better. He is all waste now. By the holy, he shall do it. It is amusing,
and it may be great by and by."

Presently Pierre said aloud: "Well, my Maca