ooring.

"How much do you want for that jug and its contents?" he asked, with a
sigh of gratitude that this supply had been overlooked.

Before Mr. Tutt could answer, Mr. Van Kamp hurried in at the door.

"Wait a moment!" he cried. "I want to bid on that!"

"This here jug hain't fer sale at no price," Uncle Billy emphatically
announced, nipping all negotiations right in the bud. "It's too pesky
hard to sneak this here licker in past Marge't, but I reckon it's my
treat, gents. Ye kin have all ye want."

One minute later Mr. Van Kamp and Mr. Ellsworth were seated, one on a
sawbuck and the other on a nail-keg, comfortably eyeing each other
across the work bench, and each was holding up a tumbler one-third
filled with the golden yellow liquid.

"Your health, sir," courteously proposed Mr. Ellsworth.

"And to you, sir," gravely replied Mr. Van Kamp.

XI

Ralph and Evelyn happened to meet at the pump, quite accidentally,
after the former had made half a dozen five-minute-apart trips for a
drink. It was Miss Van Kamp, this time, who had been studying on the
mutual acquaintance problem.

"You don't happen to know the Tylers, of Parkersburg, do you?" she
asked.

"The Tylers! I should say I do!" was the unexpected and enthusiastic
reply. "Why, we are on our way now to Miss Georgiana Tyler's wedding
to my friend Jimmy Carston. I'm to be best man."

"How delightful!" she exclaimed. "We are on the way there, too.
Georgiana was my dearest chum at school, and I am to be her 'best
girl.'"

"Let's go around on the porch and sit down," said Ralph.

XII

Mr. Van Kamp, back in the woodshed, looked about him with an eye of
content.

"Rather cozy for a woodshed," he observed. "I wonder if we couldn't
scare up a little session of dollar limit?"

Both Uncle Billy and Mr. Ellsworth were willing. Death and poker level
all Americans. A fourth hand was needed, however. The stage driver was
in bed and asleep, and Mr. Ellsworth volunteered to find the extra
player.

"I'll get Ralph," he said. "He plays a fairly stiff game." He finally
found his son on the porch, apparently alone, and stated his errand.

"Thank you, but I don't believe I care to play this evening," was the
astounding reply, and Mr. Ellsworth looked closer. He made out, then,
a dim figure on the other side of Ralph.

"Oh! Of course not!" he blundered, and went back to the woodshed.

Three-handed poker is a miserable game, and it seldom lasts long.