r purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon
the fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. "Will you oblige us with the
initial story?" he asked.

The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his
head on account of the draughts.

"Well," he began, without any embarrassment, "this is about the way I
size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by
this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of
his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is
still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and
gold bonds when he's got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around
to see her. Well, maybe he's hot, and talks like the proprietor, and
forgets that an engagement ain't always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I
guess that makes Alice warm under the lace yoke. Well, she answers
back sharp. Well, he--"

"Say!" interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, "if you
could put up a windmill on every one of them 'wells' you're using,
you'd be able to retire from business, wouldn't you?"

The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.

"Oh, I ain't no _Guy de Mopassong_," he said, cheerfully. "I'm
giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like
this: 'Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,' says she; 'but he takes me
riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that's what you never do.
Ain't I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?' 'Pass this
chatfield-chatfield thing along,' says Redruth;--'hand out the mitt to
the Willie with creases in it or you don't put your slippers under my
wardrobe.'

"Now that kind of train orders don't go with a girl that's got any
spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only
wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and
caramels before she settled down to patch George's other pair, and be
a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won't come down.
Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away
and hits the booze. Yep. That's what done it. I bet that girl fired
the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left.
George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts
unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the
aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. 'Me for the hermit's hut,'
says George, 'and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that
isn't there.'

"But that Alice, in my mi