make plum-duff--me that's sailed the sea for thutty-five
years?"

"Never made no such remarks on your cookin'," declared the guest,
clearing his husky throat in which the food seemed to be sticking.

"Hain't got no fault to find with that plum-duff?"

"Not a mite," agreed Mr. Brackett, heartily.

"Then you come back out here to the table and eat it. You ain't goin'
to slander none of my vittles that I've took as much trouble with
as I have with this."

"But I'm full up--chock!" pleaded Mr. Brackett. "I wisht I'd have
saved room. I reckon it's good. But I ain't carin' for it."

"You'll come out and eat that duff if I have to stuff it down your
thro't with the butt of your hoss-whip," said the Cap'n with an
iciness that was terrifying. He grabbed the little man by the collar
and dragged him toward the dining-room, balancing the dish in the
other hand.

"I'll bust," wailed Mr. Brackett.

"Well, that bump will make a little room," remarked Cap'n Sproul,
jouncing him down into a chair.

He planted one broad hand on the table and the other on his hip, and
stood over the guest until the last crumb of the duff was gone,
although Mr. Brackett clucked hiccups like an overfed hen. The Cap'n
felt some of his choler evaporate, indulging in this sweet act of
tyranny.

Resentment came slowly into the jovial nature of meek Todd Ward
Brackett. But as he pushed away from the table he found courage to
bend baleful gaze on his over-hospitable host.

"I've put up at a good many taverns in my life," he said, "and I'm
allus willin' to eat my fair share of vittles, but I reckon I've got
the right to say how much!"

"If you're done eatin'," snapped the Cap'n, "get along out, and don't
stay round in the way of the help." And Mr. Brackett retired, growling
over this astonishing new insult.

He surveyed the suspended alligator gloomily, as he stuffed tobacco
into his pipe.

"Better shet them jaws," he advised, "or now that he's crazy on the
plum-duff question he'll be jamming the rest of that stuff into you."

"You can't say outside that the table ain't all right or that folks
go away hungry under the new management," remarked Hiram,
endeavoring to palliate.

"New management goin' to inorg'rate the plum-duffin' idee as a
reg'lar system?" inquired Mr. Brackett, sullenly. "If it is, I'll
stay over to-morrow and see you operate on the new elder that's goin'
to supply the pulpit Sunday--pervidin' he stays here."

Hiram blinked