red Bacon, as the truth burst upon him. "So
that's what you do when I go off to town and leave you to chop wood. So
you're goun' to git married, hey?"

He was now where Lime could see him, glaring up into his smiling blue
eyes. Lime stood his ground.

"Yes, sir. That's the calculation."

"Well, I guess I'll have somethin' t' say about that," said Bacon,
nodding his head violently.

"I rather expected y' would. Blaze away. Your privilege--my bad luck.
Sail in ol' man. What's y'r objection to me fer a son-in-law?"

"Don't you worry, young feller. I'll come at it soon enough," went on
Bacon, as he turned up another burr in a very awkward corner. In his
nervous excitement the wrench slipped, banging his knuckle.

"Ouch! Thunder--m-m-m!" howled and snarled the wounded man.

"What's the matter? Bark y'r knuckle?" queried Lime, feeling a mighty
impulse to laugh. But when he saw the old savage straighten up and glare
at him he sobered. Bacon was now in a frightful temper. The veins in his
great, bare, weather-beaten neck swelled dangerously.

"Jest let me say right here that I've had enough o' you. You can't live
on the same acre with my girl another day."

"What makes ye think I can't?" It was now the young man's turn to draw
himself up, and as he faced the old man, his arms folded and each vast
hand grasping an elbow, he looked like a statue of red granite, and the
hands resembled the paws of a crouching lion; but his eyes smiled.

"I don't _think_, I know ye won't."

"What's the objection to me?"

"Objection? Hell! What's the inducement? My hired man, an' not three
shirts to yer back!"

"That's another; I've got four. Say, old man, did you ever work out for
a living?"

"That's none o' your business," growled Bacon a little taken down. "I've
worked an' scraped, an' got t'gether a little prop'ty here, an' they
ain't no sucker like you goun' to come 'long here, an' live off me, an'
spend my prop'ty after I'm dead. You can jest bet high on that."

"Who's goin' t' live on ye?"

"You're aimun' to."

"I ain't, neither."

"Yes, y'are. You've loafed on me ever since I hired ye."

"That's a--" Lime checked himself for Marietta's sake, and the enraged
father went on:--

"I hired ye t' cut wood, an' you've gone an' fooled my daughter away
from me. Now you just figger up what I owe ye, and git out o' here. Ye
can't go too soon t' suit _me_."

Bacon was renowned as the hardest man to handle in Cedar County, and