go;
look yer!"--he bent his head and showed a scar along the scalp--"that's
her playfulness with a fire shovel! Look yer!"--he quickly opened his
collar, where his neck and cheek were striped and crossed with adhesive
plaster--"that's all that was left o' a glass jar o' preserves--the
preserves got away, but some of the glass got stuck! That's when she
heard I was a di-vorced man and hadn't told her."

"Were you a di-vorced man?" gasped Abner.

"You know that; in course I was," said Byers scornfully; "d'ye meanter
say she didn't tell ye?"

"She?" echoed Abner vaguely. "Your wife--you said just now she didn't
know it before."

"My wife ez oncet was, I mean! Mary Ellen--your wife ez is to be," said
Byers, with deep irony. "Oh, come now. Pretend ye don't know! Hi there!
Hands off! Don't strike a man when he's down, like I am."

But Abner's clutch of Byers's shoulder relaxed, and he sank down to a
sitting posture on the root. In the meantime Byers, overcome by a sense
of this new misery added to his manifold grievances, gave way to maudlin
silent tears.

"Mary Ellen--your first wife?" repeated Abner vacantly.

"Yesh!" said Byers thickly, "my first wife--shelected and picked out
fer your shecond wife--by your first--like d----d conundrum. How wash I
t'know?" he said, with a sudden shriek of public expostulation--"thash
what I wanter know. Here I come to talk with fr'en', like man to man,
unshuspecting, innoshent as chile, about my shecond wife! Fr'en' drops
out, carryin' off the whiskey. Then I hear all o' suddent voice o'
Mary Ellen talkin' in kitchen; then I come round softly and see Mary
Ellen--my wife as useter be--standin' at fr'en's kitchen winder. Then I
lights out quicker 'n lightnin' and scoots! And when I gets back home,
I ups and tells my wife. And whosh fault ish't! Who shaid a man oughter
tell hish wife? You! Who keepsh other mensh' first wivesh at kishen
winder to frighten 'em to tell? You!"

But a change had already come over the face of Abner Langworthy. The
anger, anxiety, astonishment, and vacuity that was there had vanished,
and he looked up with his usual resigned acceptance of the inevitable
as he said, "I reckon that's so! And seein' it's so," with good-natured
tolerance, he added, "I reckon I'll break rules for oncet and stand ye
another drink."

He stood another drink and yet another, and eventually put the doubly
widowed Byers to bed in his own room. These were but details of a larger
tri