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And here the fellow gave away completely to his humour and his rachetty laughter rolled down the night wind. "Howsomever," he added with a certain genuine comfort in his voice, "I un'erstan' you're to git the gal. Of course, that ain't holdin' the whip han' like you thought you done—but it's som'pin."

Abner hated this yawping fool who was laughing and philosophizing so easily over a lost fortune. He muttered that he didn't know, and walked on. The villager, with that uncomprehending indifference to mental suffering which marks his ilk, turned a few steps after Abner.

"But d'reckon Jim Sandage is agoin' to do anything?" he persevered. "You know Jim's one o' them hell cats when you git him started."

"I don't know what he'll do!" cried Abner in pain.

"Now, you know Railroad Jones ain't goin' to pay him out. He'll shore let Jim go to the pen."

Abner hurried away and the man called after him angrily, "Hell, you needn't be too stuck up to talk to me! You're no better'n I am; yore daddy died in jail." And with this parting shot for Abner's lack of delicacy and consideration the villager fell behind.

As the teamster entered the Sandage home it suddenly smote him that the life which this new bungalow represented was no longer for him; that is, unless he really did marry Adelaide, which, somehow, he did not feel he would. He found that he had based his thought of marrying Adelaide Jones upon the fact that he himself had money. Now a certain hill feeling interdicted a union between Adelaide rich, and him poor. "Ever'body would say I was marryin' her for her money," he brooded, without regard for the logic of events, "an' I'm a man that wears my own boots. . ."

When Teeftallow opened the door of his home he found Mrs. Sandage sitting white-faced at the desk telephone in the hall. She had the receiver to her ear and was staring at the mouthpiece ejaculating, "What . . . He did . . . Let him go to the pen . . . Oh, I felt all the time