the many-syllabled crash or modulated music of the
latter. Also, there was the question of getting variety into his
paragraph lengths. It was all excellent practice.

And yet this technique, absorbing as it was, counted as nothing in
comparison with the subject-matter.

The method was talent; the subject-matter was Genius; and Genius had
evolved an Idea which no one had ever thought of before--something
brand new under the sun. It goes without saying that the Idea
symbolized a great Truth. One department, the more impersonal, of
Bennington's critical faculty, assured him that the Idea would take
rank with the Ideas of Plato and Emerson. Emerson, Bennington
worshipped. Plato he also worshipped--because Emerson told him to. He
had never read Plato himself. The other, the more personal and modest,
however, had perforce to doubt this, not because it doubted the Idea,
but because Bennington was not naturally conceited.

To settle the discrepancy he began to write. He laid the scene in
Arabia and decided to call it _Aliris: A Romance of all Time_, because
he liked the smooth, easy flow of the syllables.

The consciousness that he could do all this sugar-coated his Wild
Western experiences, which otherwise might have been a little
disagreeable. He could comfort himself with the reflection that he was
superior, if ridiculous.

In spots, he was certainly the latter. The locality into which his
destinies had led him lay in the tumultuous centre of the Hills, about
thirty miles from Custer and ten from Hill City. Spanish Gulch was
three miles down the draw. The Holy Smoke mine, to which Bennington was
accredited, he found to consist of a hole in the ground, of unsounded
depth, two log structures, and a chicken coop. The log structures
resembled those he had read about. In one of them lived Arthur and his
wife. The wife did the cooking. Arthur did nothing at all but sit in
the shade and smoke a pipe, and this in spite of the fact that he did
not look like a loafer. He had no official connection with the place,
except that of husband to Mrs. Arthur. The other member of the
community was Davidson, alias Old Mizzou.

The latter was cordial and voluble. As he was blessed with a long white
beard of the patriarchal type, he inspired confidence. He used
exclusively the present tense and chewed tobacco. He also played
interminable cribbage. Likewise he talked. The latter was his strong
point. Bennington found that within two days o