a flash, his walrus moustache bristling.

"I'm listening," he said, with a calmness which belied his attitude.

The other set his glass down on the counter with a bump.

"If you're listening," he said, "you have probably understood what I
said. You're talking through a fog of cynicism which seems to obscure
an otherwise fairly competent intellect. You've plundered so many
innocents in your time by purveying an excessive quantity of bluestone
disguised under the name of alcohol that your overweening conceit has
entirely distorted your perspective till you fancy that your own dregs
of human nature constitute the human nature of all the rest of the
world, who would entirely resent being classed as your fellows. In a
word you need physic, Ju."

The speaker laughed amiably, and his smile revealed the weakness which
was pointed by the signs of debauchery in his good-looking face. Ju
eyed him steadily. The offense of his words was mitigated by his
manner, but Ju resented the laugh which went round the entire room at
his expense.

"See here, Bob Whitstone," he began, abandoning his glass wiping and
supporting himself on his counter, with his face offensively thrust in
his opponent's direction, "I ain't got the langwidge you seem to have
lapped up with your mother's milk. I don't guess any sucker paid a
thousand dollars a year for my college eddication so I could come out
here and grow a couple of old beeves and spend my leisure picklin' my
food depot in a low down prairie saloon. Therefor' I'll ask you to
excuse me if I talk in a kind o' langwidge the folks about here most
gener'ly understan'. Guess you think you know some. Maybe you figger
to know it all. Wal, get this. When you get back home jest stand in
front of a fi' cent mirror, if you got one in your bum shanty, an' get
a peek at your map, an' ask yourself--when you studied it well--if I
couldn't buy you, body an' soul, fer two thousand dollars--cash. I'd
sure hate slingin' mud at any feller's features, much less yours,
who're a good customer to me, but you're comin' the highbrow, an' you
got notions of honor still floatin' around in your flabby thinkin'
department sech as was handed you by the guys who ran that thousand
dollar college. Wal, ef you'll look at yourself honest, an' argue with
yourself honest, you'll find them things is sure a shadder of the past
which happened somew'eres before you tasted that first dose o' prairie
poison which has since