er her all the time--but she ain't
as cute as what she thinks she is. Oh, maybe she's cute, but there's
them that's cuter, an' they don't live over in Europe, neither. Don't
you worry--"

"Which I'm not doin' at all, me fine duck," vouchsafed Murphy boredly,
crowding down the tobacco in his pipe. "An' it's you that's doin' the
worryin', and fer why I dunno."

"Oh, I ain't worryin'--but that gurrl, she better look out, an' the
old un she better look out too."

"An' fer what, then, Mike, should the gurrl be lookin' out? Fer a
husband, maybe yer thinkin'."

Mike nodded his head in a way that did not mean assent, but merely
that he was not telling all his thoughts. He fell silent, staring
again at the glowing crack in the stove. Twice he snapped his knuckles
before he spoke again.

"She thinks," he began again abruptly, "that everybody's blind. But
that's where she makes a big mistake. They's nothin' the matter with
_my_ eyes. An' that old un, she better look out too. Why, the gurrl,
she goes spyin' around t' meet the other spy, an' the old un she goes
spyin' around after the gurrl, an' me I'm spyin' on--_all_ of 'em!" He
waved a dirt grimed, calloused hand awkwardly. "The whole bunch," he
chortled. "They can't fool _me_ with their spyin' around! An' the
gov'ment can't fool me nayther. I know who's the spies up here, an' I
kin fool 'em all. Why, it's like back in Minnesota one time--"

Murphy, having listened attentively thus far, settled back against the
wall, swung a rough-shod foot and began nursing his pipe and elbow
again. "A-ah, an' it's the trail to Minnesota, then," he commented
disgustedly, nodding his head derisively. "Umm-hmm--it's back in
Minnesota ye're wanderin' befuddled with yer sphies. So l'ave
Minnesota wance more, Mike, an' put some beans a-soakin' like I
explained t' ye forty-wan times a're'dy. My gorry, they're like
bullets the way ye bile them fer an hour and ask that I eat thim. An'
since yer eyes is so foine and keen, Mike, that ye can see sphies
thick as rabbits in the woods, wud ye just pick out a few of the
rocks, Mike, that will not come soft with all the b'ilin' ye can give
thim? For if I come down wance more with me teeth on a rock, it's
likely I might lose me temper, I dunno."

Mike grumbled and got out the beans, and Murphy went back to his
smoking and his meditations. He made so little of Mike's outburst
about the spies that he did not trouble to connect it with any one in
the basi