the new Italian villa he had erected in that
part of Canaan where he would be most uncomfortable, and he looked
woodenly at the reporter when the latter put his question.

"Hef you any aguaintunce off Mitster Fear?" he inquired, in return,
with no expression decipherable either upon his Gargantuan face or in
his heavily enfolded eyes.

"No, sir," replied the reporter, grinning. "I never ran across him."

"Dot iss a goot t'ing fer you," said Mr. Farbach, stonily. "He iss not
a man peobles bedder try to run across. It iss what Gory tried. Now
Gory iss dead."

The reporter, slightly puzzled, lit a cigarette. "See here, Mr.
Farbach," he urged, "I only want a word or two about this thing; and
you might give me a brief expression concerning that man Louden
besides: just a hint of what you think of his influence here, you know,
and of the kind of sharp work he practises. Something like that."

"I see," said the brewer, slowly. "Happy Fear I hef knowt for a goot
many years. He iss a goot frient of mine."

"What?"

"Choe Louten iss a bedder one," continued Mr. Farbach, turning again to
stare at his chickens.

"Git owit."

"What?"

"Git owit," repeated the other, without passion, without anger, without
any expression whatsoever. "Git owit."

The reporter's prejudice against the German nation dated from that
moment.

There were others, here and there, who were less self-contained than
the brewer. A farm-hand struck a fellow laborer in the harvest-field
for speaking ill of Joe; and the unravelling of a strange street fight,
one day, disclosed as its cause a like resentment, on the part of a
blind broom-maker, engendered by a like offence. The broom-maker's
companion, reading the Tocsin as the two walked together, had begun the
quarrel by remarking that Happy Fear ought to be hanged once for his
own sake and twice more "to show up that shyster Louden." Warm words
followed, leading to extremely material conflict, in which, in spite of
his blindness, the broom-maker had so much the best of it that he was
removed from the triumphant attitude he had assumed toward the person
of his adversary, which was an admirable imitation of the dismounted
St. George and the Dragon, and conveyed to the jail. Keenest
investigation failed to reveal anything oblique in the man's record; to
the astonishment of Canaan, there was nothing against him. He was
blind and moderately poor; but a respectable, hard-working artisan, and