hauling coal and
excavating rock till they went back on me. And when I couldn't hold
a pick or a whip I took up halberdiering to give 'em a rest. Tureens
full of hot soup don't seem to be a particularly soothing
treatment.'

"I would have bet on that girl. That high-tempered kind always go
as far the other way, according to my experience. She whizzes round
the table like a cyclone and catches both his hands in hers. 'Poor
hands--dear hands,' she sings out, and sheds tears on 'em and holds
'em close to her bosom. Well, sir, with all that Rindslosh scenery
it was just like a play. And the halberdier sits down at the table
at the girl's side, and I served the rest of the supper. And that
was about all, except that when they left he shed his hardware store
and went with 'em."

I dislike to be side-tracked from an original proposition.

"But you haven't told me, Eighteen," said I, "how the cigar-case
came to be broken."

"Oh, that was last night," said Eighteen. "Sir Percival and the
girl drove up in a cream-coloured motor-car, and had dinner in the
Rindslosh. 'The same table, Billy,' I heard her say as they went up.
I waited on 'em. We've got a new halberdier now, a bow-legged guy
with a face like a sheep. As they came down-stairs Sir Percival
passes him a ten-case note. The new halberdier drops his halberd,
and it falls on the cigar-case. That's how that happened."

XXI

TWO RENEGADES

In the Gate City of the South the Confederate Veterans were
reuniting; and I stood to see them march, beneath the tangled
flags of the great conflict, to the hall of their oratory and
commemoration.

While the irregular and halting line was passing I made onslaught
upon it and dragged from the ranks my friend Barnard O'Keefe, who
had no right to be there. For he was a Northerner born and bred; and
what should he be doing hallooing for the Stars and Bars among those
gray and moribund veterans? And why should he be trudging, with his
shining, martial, humorous, broad face, among those warriors of a
previous and alien generation?

I say I dragged him forth, and held him till the last hickory leg
and waving goatee had stumbled past. And then I hustled him out
of the crowd into a cool interior; for the Gate City was stirred
that day, and the hand-organs wisely eliminated "Marching Through
Georgia" from their repertories.

"Now, what deviltry are you up to?" I asked of O'Keefe when there
were a table and things in glasses b