s
acerbity, "Colonel Ward here is--"

"You go 'long two miles, swing at the drab school-house, and go to
the second white house on the left-hand side of the road!" shouted
Ward, hastily breaking in on the explanation. His thin cheeks flushed
angrily. The man shuffled on.

"Why don't you print it on a play-card that I'm engaged to Pharlina
Pike and hang it on the fence there?" the Colonel snorted, wrathfully,
whirling on the Cap'n. "Didn't it ever occur to you that some things
in this world ain't none of your business?"

The Cap'n sighed with the resigned air that he had been displaying
during the week past.

"Lemme see, where was I?" went on the Colonel, surlily. "I was sayin',
wasn't I, that I didn't see how I'd let you stick yourself into this
fam'ly as you've done? It's time now for you and me to git to a
reck'nin'. There's blamed liars round here snick'rin' in their
whiskers, and sayin' that you've backed me down. Now--"

Another man was at the fence, and interrupted with aggravating
disregard of the Colonel's intentness on the business in hand. This
stranger was short and squat, stood with his feet braced wide apart,
and had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. His broad face wore
a cheery smile.

"I've beat nor'west from the railroad, fetched a covered bridge on
the port quarter, shipmates," he roared, jovially, "and here I be,
bearin's lost and dead-reck'nin' skow-wowed."

"Seems to be your breed," sneered Ward to the Cap'n. "What's that
he's sayin', put in human language?"

"I'm chartered for port--port"--he also referred to a folded
paper--"to port Furliny Pike, som'eres in this latitude. Give me
p'ints o' compass, will ye?"

Ward leaped to his feet and strode toward the fence, his long legs
working like calipers.

"What do ye want of Pharline Pike?" he demanded, angrily.

"None of your business," replied the cheerful sailor. "If this is
the way landlubbers take an honest man's hail, ye're all jest as bad
as I've heard ye was."

"I'm a mind to cuff your ears," yapped the Colonel.

The other glanced up the angular height of his antagonist.

"Try it," he said, squaring his sturdy little figure. "Try it, and
I'll climb your main riggin' and dance a jig on that dog-vane of a
head of yourn."

This alacrity for combat clearly backed down Ward. In his rampageous
life his tongue had usually served him better than his fists.

"Avast, shipmate!" called the Cap'n, in his best sea tones. The
sailor