o lament that he
had not brought an umbrella and said he would go after one, when the
storm so increased in violence that even a person provided with an
umbrella--as was Mr. Middleton--would not care to venture into it, for
such was the might of the wind now filling the air with its shrieks,
that the rain swept in great lateral sheets which made an umbrella a
futile protection. Yet notwithstanding this fury of the elements, the
man of many women went out.

A half hour went by. An hour, and the storm did not abate and the man
did not return. The good-looking waitress invited Mr. Middleton to sit
at ease by a table in a rear part of the room, where lolling on the
opposite side, with charming unconsciousness she let her hand lie
stretched more than half across the board, a rampart of crumpled
newspapers concealing it from the view of the eighth guest of the
mulierose man. But whatever Mr. Middleton had done on previous
occasions and might do on occasions yet to come, he now wished to
avoid all appearances that might cause the eighth woman to regard him
as at all inclined to other than discreet and modest conduct, for he
was resolved to find out what he could about the man and eight women.
So affecting not to note the hand temptingly disposed, he discoursed
in a voice which was plainly audible in every corner of the room, not
so much because of its loudness--for he had but little raised it--as
because of a distinct and precise enunciation. This very precision,
which always implies a regard for the rules, proprieties and amenities
of life, seemed to stamp him as a man worthy of confidence, even had
not his sentiments been of the most high-minded character. He
described the great flood of 1882, which wrought such havoc in
Missouri, in which cataclysm his Uncle Henry Perkins had suffered
great loss. He extolled the commendable conduct of his uncle in
sacrificing valuable property that he might save a woman; letting a
flatboat loaded with twenty-five hogs whirl away in the raging flood,
in order to rescue a woman from Booneville, Missouri, the wife of a
county judge, who was floating in the waste of waters upon a small red
barn. The dullest could infer from the approval he gave this act of
his Uncle Henry, unwisely chivalrous as it might seem in view of the
fact that whoever rescued the judge's wife farther down stream, would
return her to the judge, while no one would return the hogs to Mr.
Perkins--the dullest could infer fr