om the house and stepped gently out of the yard.
There was no sense in waiting longer, and he knew it.

Mrs. Tarbro-Smith, receiving a letter from the editor of MURRAY'S
MAGAZINE, had learned at length that Clarence was not typical Iowa, and
she had transferred her field of study to Kilo on his recommendation.
She meant to spend the rest of the season there, and hoped Miss Sally
would take her to board. She found that Miss Sally would be glad,
indeed, to have her company, and Mrs. Smith did not think it necessary
to mention that she was looking for local color and types. She was
pleased when she heard that Eliph' Hewlitt, who had so interested her,
was "working" Kilo.

As Eliph' Hewlitt walked toward the hotel he felt that another
opportunity had been lost--thrown away--by his inability to avoid
Jarby's Encyclopedia as a topic, and for one moment he came as near
giving up Miss Sally as he ever came to giving up anything. In that
moment he saw the simplicity of his courtship, as he had imagined
it would be, resolve itself into a tangled affair, as all these new
individualities entered into it. Instead of being a mere matter between
himself and Miss Sally, it was involving men and women, one after the
other. It seemed to become a fight between himself, a singer stranger in
Kilo, and an endless chain of interested citizens. Already there was Pap
Briggs, who hated book agents; the Colonel and Skinner, who hoped to
win Miss Sally; Mrs. Smith, who would serve as a defense against Eliph's
attacks; and, as he walked down the street, he seemed to see in every
man, woman, and child, a possible ally of either the Colonel or Skinner.
But he tucked his sample copy of Jarby's under his arm more securely,
and braced up his courage. He even whistled as he approached the hotel,
but, when he glanced up at the attorney's office and saw Toole and the
Colonel with their head together, he stopped whistling. If Toole was
going to take either side, Eliph' would have liked to claim him. Toole
was a smart man.

Toole and the Colonel left Miss Sally's with the attorney well pleased,
and his enigmatic smile rested on his face as he led the Colonel to
his office. He handed him a chair, and made him take a cigar, and then
turned and faced him.

"Now," he said, "what are you going to do with those
what-do-you-call-'ems?"

"Them fire-extinguishers?" said the Colonel, licking the cigar around
and around before lighting it. "Well, I ain't had much