is only to be had by a payment in kind. Bennie paraded his duty as
ostentatiously as his pleasure, and with the same lack of words.
Hartwell noted, and kept silence.

Hartwell looked across to the table which Bennie was preparing for the
mill crew.

"Do you supply the men as liberally as you do your own table,
Firmstone?"

"Just the same."

"Don't think I want to restrict you, Firmstone. I want you to have the
best you can get, but it strikes me as a little extravagant for the
men."

Bennie considered himself invaded.

"The men pay for their extravagance, sir."

"A dollar a day only, with no risks," Hartwell tendered, rather stiffly.

"I'll trade my wages for your profits," retorted Bennie, "and give you a
commission, and I'll bind myself to feed them no more hash than I do
now!"

The company rose from the table. For the benefit of Miss Hartwell and
Firmstone, Bennie moved across the room with the dignity of a
drum-major, and, opening the door, bowed his guests from his presence.

CHAPTER XIII

_The Stork and the Cranes_

In spite of Elise's declaration that she would see him again, Firmstone
dropped her from his mind long before he reached his office. She had
been an unexpected though not an unpleasant, incident; but he had
regarded her as only an incident, after all. Her beauty and vivacity
created an ephemeral interest; yet there were many reasons why it
promised to be only ephemeral. The Blue Goose was a gambling, drinking
resort, a den of iniquity which Firmstone loathed, a thing which, in
spite of all, thrust itself forward to be taken into account. How much
worse than a den of thieves and a centre of insurrection it was he had
never stated to himself. He, however, would have had no hesitancy in
completing the attributes of the place had he been asked. The fact that
the aegis of marriage vows spread its protecting mantle over the
proprietor, and its shadow over the permanent residents, would never
have caused a wavering doubt, or certified to the moral respectability
of the contracting parties. Firmstone was not the first to ask if any
good thing could come out of Nazareth, or if untarnished purity could
dwell in the tents of the Nazarenes. It occasionally happens that a
stork is caught among cranes and, even innocent, is compelled to share
the fate of its guilty, though accidental, associates.

Thus it happened that when Elise, for the second time, met Firmstone at
the falls he hardly c