ignorant of woman's powers in other ways. We heard yesterday
that his old and faithful--though rather trying--housekeeper had
quarrelled with him about smoking! We were greatly surprised, for we
knew that the old gentleman is not and never was, a smoker. She
threatened to leave, but we have since heard, I am glad to say, that
they have made it up!

"H'm! there's food for meditation in all that," said Dick Darvall, as he
knocked the ashes out of his pipe and put it in his vest pocket.

CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

HUNKY BEN AND CHARLIE GET BEYOND THEIR DEPTH, AND BUCK TOM GETS BEYOND
RECALL.

While hunting together in the woods near Traitor's Trap one day Charlie
Brooke and Hunky Ben came to a halt on the summit of an eminence that
commanded a wide view over the surrounding country.

"'Tis a glorious place, Ben," said Brooke, leaning his rifle against a
tree and mounting on a piece of rock, the better to take in the
beautiful prospect of woodland, river, and lake. "When I think of the
swarms of poor folk in the old country who don't own a foot of land,
have little to eat and only rags to cover them, I long to bring them out
here and plant them down where God has spread His blessings so
bountifully, where there is never lack of work, and where Nature pays
high wages to those who obey her laws."

"No doubt there's room enough here," returned the scout sitting down and
laying his rifle across his knees. "I've often thowt on them subjects,
but my thowts only lead to puzzlement; for, out here in the wilderness,
a man can't git all the information needful to larn him about things in
the old world. Dear, dear, it do seem strange to me that any man should
choose to starve in the cities when there's the free wilderness to roam
about in. I mind havin' a palaver once wi' a stove-up man when I was
ranchin' down in Kansas on the Indian Territory Line. Screw was his
name, an' a real kind-hearted fellow he was too--only he couldn't keep
his hand off that curse o' mankind, the bottle. I mentioned to him my
puzzlements about this matter, an' he up fist an' come down on the table
wi' a crack that made the glasses bounce as if they'd all come alive,
an' caused a plate o' mush in front of him to spread itself all over the
place--but he cared nothin' for that, he was so riled up by the thowts
my obsarvation had shook up.

"`Hunky Ben,' says he, glowerin' at me like a bull wi' the measles, `the
reason we stay there a