ortunity for pressing their suits,
there was not time to be lost, and the sooner he began the sooner he
would win. But none of his ordinary methods of entering unwilling houses
would serve his purpose this time. It would not do to begin by making
Miss Sally unfriendly. So Eliph' tucked his book more snugly under his
left arm and looked at the house. He walked to the gate and looked up at
the roof; walked across the street and viewed the house in perspective;
but nothing useful came of it, so he crossed the street again and tried
ringing the doorbell once more. He rang it sharply and waited. Then he
knocked and waited. He was willing to wait until the door opened, and
he leaned against the porch railing and waited, ringing the doorbell
insinuatingly, or commandingly, or coaxingly, from time to time.

Meanwhile, the attorney waited until the half hour he had assigned was
up, and then walked toward Miss Briggs' house with briskly business-like
steps.

"Now, some folks," he said to himself, as he walked, "wouldn't get any
fun at all out of a case like this, but I do. That's the way to keep
young. It's why I don't grow stale in this town. It is a small puddle
for a toad of my size, but I hop around and keep things stirred up."

As he neared the house, he saw the Colonel approaching from the opposite
direction, and he waved his hand to him, and the Colonel hurried to meet
him. They turned into the yard together, and saw Eliph' Hewlitt resting
easily against the porch railing.

"Nobody's at home?" asked the attorney.

"Yes," said Eliph'. "Somebody's home, but they don't answer the bell.

"Book agent?" said the attorney. "Well, you can't blame them, much. Gems
of literature aren't always wanted."

The Colonel scowled. He felt a personal interest in Pap Briggs' money,
and he resented any attempt to part the old man from any of it. He
suffered almost as deeply at tax time as Pap himself did, and he
considered the money Sally had to pay in installments on Sir Walter
Scott as practically thrown away, and that she might as well have taken
it out of his own pocket. He knocked on the lower step of the porch,
with the side of his ax, angrily.

"You git out of this here yard!" he ordered. "I don't want no book
agents a-hangin' around here, an' I won't have it. You clean out of
here!"

Eliph' coughed lightly behind his hand, but the words of reproof that he
intended to launch softly at the Colonel were never spoken.

"Well, t