r, there," said Scully.

"Plenty of room on the other side of the stove," said Johnnie.

"Do you think we want to sit in the draught?" roared the father.

But the Swede here interposed with a grandeur of confidence. "No, no.
Let the boy sit where he likes," he cried in a bullying voice to the
father.

"All right! All right!" said Scully, deferentially. The cowboy and the
Easterner exchanged glances of wonder.

The five chairs were formed in a crescent about one side of the stove.
The Swede began to talk; he talked arrogantly, profanely, angrily.
Johnnie, the cowboy, and the Easterner maintained a morose silence,
while old Scully appeared to be receptive and eager, breaking in
constantly with sympathetic ejaculations.

Finally the Swede announced that he was thirsty. He moved in his
chair, and said that he would go for a drink of water.

"I'll git it for you," cried Scully at once.

"No," said the Swede, contemptuously. "I'll get it for myself." He
arose and stalked with the air of an owner off into the executive
parts of the hotel.

As soon as the Swede was out of hearing Scully sprang to his feet and
whispered intensely to the others: "Up-stairs he thought I was tryin'
to poison 'im."

"Say," said Johnnie, "this makes me sick. Why don't you throw 'im out
in the snow?"

"Why, he's all right now," declared Scully. "It was only that he was
from the East, and he thought this was a tough place. That's all. He's
all right now."

The cowboy looked with admiration upon the Easterner. "You were
straight," he said. "You were on to that there Dutchman."

"Well," said Johnnie to his father, "he may be all right now, but I
don't see it. Other time he was scared, but now he's too fresh."

Scully's speech was always a combination of Irish brogue and idiom,
Western twang and idiom, and scraps of curiously formal diction taken
from the story-books and newspapers, He now hurled a strange mass of
language at the head of his son. "What do I keep? What do I keep? What
do I keep?" he demanded, in a voice of thunder. He slapped his knee
impressively, to indicate that he himself was going to make reply, and
that all should heed. "I keep a hotel," he shouted. "A hotel, do you
mind? A guest under my roof has sacred privileges. He is to be
intimidated by none. Not one word shall he hear that would prejudice
him in favor of goin' away. I'll not have it. There's no place in this
here town where they can say they iver took in a gu