had struck him that
Mr. Byers had been drinking before dinner.

"I'm agreeable," responded Byers promptly; "but," with a glance at the
crowded bar-room, "couldn't we go somewhere, jest you and me, and have a
quiet confab?"

"I reckon. But ye must wait till we get her off."

Mr. Byers started slightly, but it appeared that the impedimental sex in
this case was the coach, which, after a slight feminine hesitation, was
at last started. Whereupon Mr. Langworthy, followed by a negro with a
tray bearing a decanter and glasses, grasped Mr. Byers's arm, and walked
along a small side veranda the depth of the house, stepped off, and
apparently plunged with his guest into the primeval wilderness.

It has already been indicated that the site of the Big Flume Hotel had
been scantily cleared; but Mr. Byers, backwoodsman though he was, was
quite unprepared for so abrupt a change. The hotel, with its noisy crowd
and garish newness, although scarcely a dozen yards away, seemed lost
completely to sight and sound. A slight fringe of old tin cans, broken
china, shavings, and even of the long-dried chips of the felled trees,
once crossed, the two men were alone! From the tray, deposited at the
foot of an enormous pine, they took the decanter, filled their glasses,
and then disposed of themselves comfortably against a spreading root.
The curling tail of a squirrel disappeared behind them; the far-off tap
of a woodpecker accented the loneliness. And then, almost magically as
it seemed, the thin veneering of civilization on the two men seemed to
be cast off like the bark of the trees around them, and they lounged
before each other in aboriginal freedom. Mr. Byers removed his
restraining duster and undercoat. Mr. Langworthy resigned his dirty
white jacket, his collar, and unloosed a suspender, with which he
played.

"Would it be a fair question between two fa'r-minded men, ez hez lived
alone," said Mr. Byers, with a gravity so supernatural that it could be
referred only to liquor, "to ask ye in what sort o' way did Mrs. Byers
show her temper?"

"Show her temper?" echoed Abner vacantly.

"Yes--in course, I mean when you and Mrs. Byers was--was--one? You know
the di-vorce was for in-com-pat-ibility of temper."

"But she got the divorce from me, so I reckon I had the temper," said
Langworthy, with great simplicity.

"Wha-at?" said Mr. Byers, putting down his glass and gazing with drunken
gravity at the sad-eyed yet good-humoredly tolera