sighed. For one who is sensitive to surroundings,
that room was a torture chamber.

"But Mr. Beckwith," she exclaimed, "I never could spend a year here!
Isn't there a--house I could get that is a--a little--a little better
furnished? And then there is a certain publicity about staying at a
hotel."

The Honourable Dave might have been justly called the friend of ladies
in a temporary condition of loneliness. His mission in life was not
merely that of a liberator, but his natural goodness led him to perform
a hundred acts of kindness to make as comfortable as possible the
purgatory of the unfortunates under his charge. He was a man of a
remarkable appearance, and not to be lightly forgotten. His hair, above
all, fascinated Honora, and she found her eyes continually returning
to it. So incredibly short it was, and so incredibly stiff, that it
reminded her of the needle points on the cylinder of an old-fashioned
music-box; and she wondered, if it were properly inserted, what would be
the resultant melody.

The Honourable Dave's head was like a cannon-ball painted white. Across
the top of it (a blemish that would undoubtedly have spoiled the tune)
was a long scar,--a relic of one of the gentleman's many personal
difficulties. He who made the sear, Honora reflected, must have been
a strong man. The Honourable Dave, indeed, had fought his way upward
through life to the Congress of the United States; and many were the
harrowing tales of frontier life he told Honora in the long winter
evenings when the blizzards came down the river valley. They would fill
a book; unfortunately, not this book. The growing responsibilities of
taking care of the lonely ladies that came in increasing numbers to
Salomon City from the effeter portions of the continent had at length
compelled him to give up his congressional career. The Honourable Dave
was unmarried; and, he told Honora, not likely to become so. He was thus
at once human and invulnerable, a high priest dedicated to freedom.

It is needless to say that the plush rocking-chair and the picture
of the liqueur-bottle lady did not jar on his sensibilities. Like
an eminent physician who has never himself experienced neurosis, the
Honourable Dave firmly believed that he understood the trouble from
which his client was suffering. He had seen many cases of it in ladies
from the Atlantic coast: the first had surprised him, no doubt. Salomon
City, though it contained the great Boon, was not e