ng me your bank book!"

In his fury Buck grabbed her chair and tipped it forward violently in
order to dump her off his sacred platform. She fled out into space
with a flutter of skirts, landed lightly as a cat and pirouetted on
one toe, crooking her arms in the professional pose that appeals for
applause.

"This is the first time Signora Rosyelli, champion bareback rider,
ever tried to ride a mule," she chirped, "but you see she can do it
and make her graceful dismount to the music of the band."

Several villagers across the road were gaping at the scene. She
inquired the way to the tavern, one of them took her valise, and she
went down the road, tossing a kiss from her finger tips toward the two
plug hats. Plug hats watched her out of sight and then turned toward
each other with simultaneous jerk.

"Don't that beat tophet and repeat?" they inquired, in exact unison.

"What are you going to do?" asked Plug Avery.

"Fight her! Fight her clear to the high, consolidated supreme court
aggregation of the United States, or whatever they call it!" roared
Plug Ivory.

"Nobody has ever beat her yet, except Dellybunko, and we ain't in his
class," sighed Avery, despondently.

"You don't think, do you, that I'm going to lap my thumb and finger
and peel her off ten thousand dollars?"

"Why don't you and she get married and we'll all live here, happy,
hereafter?" wistfully suggested Avery. "If it was in a book it would
end off like that--sure pop."

"This ain't no book," replied Buck, elbows on his knees, eyes moodily
on the dusty planks.

"So you're bound to go to court?"

"Low court--high court--clear to the ridgepole--clear to the cupoly,
and then I'll shin the weather vane with the star spangled banner of
justice between my teeth."

"I heard a breach of promise trial once," related Avery, half closing
his eyes in reminiscence, "and it was the funniest thing I ever
listened to. 'Twas twenty years ago, and I'll bet that the people down
there laugh yet when they see that fellow walk along the street. Them
letters he wrote was certainly the squashiest--why, every one of them
seemed to woggle like a tumbler of jelly--sweet and sloppy, as you
might say! It being so long ago, when you was having your spell, I
don't suppose you remember just what you wrote to her, do you?"

Avery still gazed at the same knothole, but a hot flush was crawling
up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his
wrist acro