noticed, Miss Janet," he remarked, as he again turned
his attention to the jug, "that the animals out in these parts don't
know very much. They make people lots of trouble."

"Oh, I don't mind the trouble at all. You see, I saved this one's life
myself; that's why I am so interested in caring for him. He 's an
orphan."

"So I see. There's liable to be plenty of them. Are you partial to
orphans?"

"I could hardly help caring for him. Of course one naturally is."

Jonas again turned his attention to the jug, removing the cork and
placing it upside down on the ground. Janet held a saucer to receive
her share. The molasses was slow about making its appearance.

"This Golden Drip is a little late about coming. It's as stubborn as
old Doc Wharton used to be."

"Was he stubborn?" Janet asked, keeping the saucer level.

"He wasn't much of anything else. He was so stubborn that when he
drowned in the Comanche he floated upstream."

"Really?"

"Wasn't any doubt about it. Some people said that his foot must 'a'
been caught in the stirrup and the horse dragged him up that far from
where he went in. But I always claimed it was just natural."

As the molasses had not yet responded, he up-ended the jug still
farther and waited for results.

"I suppose," he queried, "that Steve has told you about things down
home. And all about his mother?"

"He told me that he lost his mother last winter."

"Ye-e-e-es," he said reflectively, drawing the word out as a thick
sluggish stream began to pile up in the saucer.

When she exclaimed "enough," he lowered the bottom of the jug and kept
the mouth over the saucer as the molasses continued to run from it.

"You can't stop that stuff by saying _Wo_," he remarked, whirling the
jug in his hands to stop the flow from the lip. "It is n't as thick,
though, as some that I 've seen."

"No!"

"I don't suppose Steve told you about the molasses I had with the 'J.
K.' outfit one winter."

"No, he did n't tell me anything about it."

"Well, that molasses was so thick that when you got too much on a
flapjack, all you had to do was to give the jug a few turns and wind
the molasses right up into it again. You could wrap it around the neck
of the jug till next time if you wanted to. If you 'll just excuse me
a moment, Miss Janet, I 'll put this jug back in home, sweet home,
again."

When he had put it where he found it, under the foot of the bed, he
returned to his place a