fingers interlocked, straining furiously in that muscle-racking,
joint-cracking pastime of the lumber camps known as "twisting arms."
Here again Gray was victorious, until he showed Buddy how to gain
greater leverage by changing the position of his wrist and by slightly
altering his grip, whereupon the boy's superior strength told. They
were red in the face, out of breath, and soaked with perspiration, when
Pa Briskow drove up in his expensive new touring car.

By this time Buddy's admiration had turned to adulation; he had passed
under the yoke and he gloried shamelessly in his captive state. At
supper time he appeared with his hair wetly combed in imitation of
Gray's. He wore a necktie, too, and into it he had fastened a cheap
brass stickpin, much as Gray wore his. During the meal he watched how
the guest used his knife and fork and made awkward attempts to do
likewise, but a table fork was an instrument which, heretofore, Buddy
had looked upon as a weapon of pure offense, like a whaler's harpoon,
and conveniently designed either for spearing edibles beyond his reach
or for retrieving fragments of meat lurking between his back teeth. He
even did some hasty manicuring under the edge of the table with his
jack-knife.

Pa Briskow was scarcely less observant than his son. He watched Gray's
every move; he sounded him out adroitly; he pondered his lightest word.
After the supper things had been cleared away and the dishes washed,
the entire family adjourned to the front room and again examined the
jewelry. It was an absorbing task, they did not hurry it. Not until the
following afternoon, in fact, did they finally make their selections,
and then they were guided almost wholly by the good taste of their
guest. Gray did not exploit them. On the contrary, his effort was to
limit their extravagance; but in this he had little success, for Pa
Briskow had decided to indulge his generous impulses to the full and
insisted upon so doing. The check he finally wrote was one of five
figures.

By this time the visitor had become aware of arousing a queer reaction
in Allegheny Briskow. He had overcome her diffidence early enough; he
had unsealed her lips; he had obtained an insight into her character;
but once that was done, the girl retired within herself again and he
could get nothing more out of her. He would have believed that she
actually disliked him, had it not been for the fact that whatever he
said, she took as gospel, that w