happen to clear the stone fence as well as we did the
rail fence, it might be more disastrous."

"Oh, land!" he said with a cackling laugh, "I ain't meanin' that kind
of a fence. I mean the kind you--Say! You ain't one of them
teetotalers, be you?"

"Only in theory," I replied, "but this stone fence drink is a new one
on me. What's it like?"

He stopped the "autoo" and pulled a bottle from an inner pocket.

"You kin taste it better than I kin tell it," he declared. "Take a
pull--a condumned good one."

I rarely imbibed, confining my indulgences to the demands of
necessity, but I thought that the flight of Ptolemy, the ghostly
encounter, and my Mazeppa--wild ride all combined to constitute an
occasion adequate to call for a bracer in the shape of a stone fence,
or anything he might produce.

I took what I considered a "condumned good one" from the bottle and it
nearly strangled me, but I followed the aged stranger's advice to take
another to "cure the chokes" caused by the first one. On general
principles I took a third and then reluctantly returned him the
bottle.

"Here's over the moon," he jovially exclaimed as he proceeded to make
my attempt at a "condumned good one" appear most niggardly.

"May I ask," I inquired when my feeling of nerve-tense strain had
vanished, and I felt as if I were treading thin air, "just what is in
a stone fence?"

"Well, what do you think?" he asked slyly.

"I think the very devil is in it," I replied.

"Well, mebby," he admitted. "It's two-thirds hard cider and one-third
whisky. It's a healthy, hearting drink and yet it has a leetle come
back to it--a sort o' kick, you know. But this is where I live,"
pointing to a farmhouse well back from the road, "but I am goin' to
run you on to your tavern though."

The hotel was dark, save for a light in my room. I invited him in, but
he was anxious to "git hum and tell the folks", so I gave him some
cigars and went in to "tell my folks."

I found them in the room waiting for me. That is, Beth was in the
room, sitting by the table and pretending to read. Silvia and Rob were
out in the little balcony. They came inside as soon as they heard my
voice.

"Oh, was he there?" asked Silvia anxiously.

"Yes," I replied. "He answered the telephone himself."

I was feeling quite exhilarated by this time. My wife looked a perfect
vision to me. Beth, I thought, was some sister, and Rob the best
fellow in the world. Even the Polydores at long