snapped Judson.

"Me own," responded O'mie calmly.

"I can't have it. That's it. I just can't have my clerks and underlings
running around over the country taking my time."

"Then I'll lave your time here whin I go," O'mie spoke coolly. He had
always been respectful toward his employer, but he had no servile fear
of him.

"I just can't allow it," Judson went on. "I need you here." O'mie was
the life of the business, the best asset in the store. "It may be a
slack time, but I can't have it; that's it, I just can't put up with it.
Besides," he simpered a little, in spite of himself, "besides, I'm
likely to be off a few days myself, just any time, I can get ready for a
step I have in mind, an important step, just any minute, but it's
different with some others, and we have to regard some others, you know;
have to let some others have their way once in a while. We'll consider
it settled now. You are to stay right here."

"Ye'll consider it settled that I'm nadin' a tin days' vacation right
away, an' must have it."

"I can't do it, O'Meara; that's it. I would not give you your place
again, and I won't pay you a cent of this quarter's salary."

Judson's foolish temper was always his undoing.

"You say you won't?" O'mie asked with a smile.

"No, I won't. Hereafter you may beg your way or starve!" Judson fairly
shouted.

"Excuse me, Mr. Amos Judson, but I'm not to thim straits yit. Not yit.
I've a little bank account an' a good name at Cris Mead's bank. Most as
good as yours."

The shot went home. Judson had but recently failed to get the bank's
backing in a business dealing he had hoped to carry through on loans,
and it had cut his vanity deeply.

"Good-bye, Amos, I'll be back, but not any sooner than ye nade me," and
he was gone.

The next day Dever the stage driver told us O'mie was going up to
Wyandotte on business.

"Whose business?" I asked. "He doesn't know a soul in Wyandotte, except
Tell and Jim, who were working up there the last I knew. Tell may be in
Fort Scott now. Whose business was it?"

"That's what I asked him," Dever answered with a grin, "and he said, his
own."

Whatever it was, O'mie was back again before the end of the week. But he
idled about for the full ten days, until Judson grew frantic. The store
could not be managed without him, and it was gratifying to O'mie's
mischievous spirit to be solicited with pledge and courtesy to take his
place again.

After O'mie had left me in the