could find a remark of a consoling nature, but
there was none convenient.

"'I'd be glad, now,' says Ed, 'if you'll let me go. I've been hard
hit, but I'll hit the ration supply harder. I'm going to clean out
every restaurant in town. I'm going to wade waist deep in sirloins
and swim in ham and eggs. It's an awful thing, Jeff Peters, for
a man to come to this pass--to give up his girl for something to
eat--it's worse than that man Esau, that swapped his copyright for a
partridge--but then, hunger's a fierce thing. You'll excuse me, now,
Jeff, for I smell a pervasion of ham frying in the distance, and my
legs are crying out to stampede in that direction.'

"'A hearty meal to you, Ed Collier,' I says to him, 'and no hard
feelings. For myself, I am projected to be an unseldom eater, and I
have condolence for your predicaments.'

"There was a sudden big whiff of frying ham smell on the breeze; and
the Champion Faster gives a snort and gallops off in the dark toward
fodder.

"I wish some of the cultured outfit that are always advertising the
extenuating circumstances of love and romance had been there to see.
There was Ed Collier, a fine man full of contrivances and flirtations,
abandoning the girl of his heart and ripping out into the contiguous
territory in the pursuit of sordid grub. 'Twas a rebuke to the poets
and a slap at the best-paying element of fiction. An empty stomach is
a sure antidote to an overfull heart.

"I was naturally anxious to know how far Mame was infatuated with
Collier and his stratagems. I went inside the Unparalleled Exhibition,
and there she was. She looked surprised to see me, but unguilty.

"'It's an elegant evening outside,' says I. 'The coolness is quite
nice and gratifying, and the stars are lined out, first class, up
where they belong. Wouldn't you shake these by-products of the animal
kingdom long enough to take a walk with a common human who never was
on a programme in his life?'

"Mame gave a sort of sly glance around, and I knew what that meant.

"'Oh,' says I, 'I hate to tell you; but the curiosity that lives on
wind has flew the coop. He just crawled out under the tent. By this
time he has amalgamated himself with half the delicatessen truck in
town.'

"'You mean Ed Collier?' says Mame.

"'I do,' I answers; 'and a pity it is that he has gone back to crime
again. I met him outside the tent, and he exposed his intentions of
devastating the food crop of the world. 'Tis enorm