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The last sentence captured the windmill man. He was not one to linger in the dumps.

“That’s a first-rate scheme, Judge,” he said, heartily. “Be a regular short-story vaudeville, won’t it? I used to be correspondent for a paper in Springfield, and when there wasn’t any news I faked it. Guess I can do my turn all right.”

“I think the idea is charming,” said the lady passenger, brightly. “It will be almost like a game.”

Judge Menefee stepped forward and placed the apple in her hand impressively.

“In olden days,” he said, orotundly, “Paris awarded the golden apple to the most beautiful.”

“I was at the Exposition,” remarked the windmill man, now cheerful again, “but I never heard of it. And I was on the Midway, too, all the time I wasn’t at the machinery exhibit.”

“But now,” continued the Judge, “the fruit shall translate to us the mystery and wisdom of the feminine heart. Take the apple, Miss Garland. Hear our modest tales of romance, and then award the prize as you may deem it just.”

The lady passenger smiled sweetly. The apple lay in her lap beneath her robes and wraps. She reclined against her protecting bulwark, brightly and cosily at ease. But for the voices and the wind one might have listened hopefully to hear her purr. Someone cast fresh logs upon the fire. Judge Menefee nodded suavely. “Will you oblige us with the initial story?” he asked.

The windmill man sat as sits a Turk, with his hat well back on his head on account of the draughts.

“Well,” he began, without any embarrassment, “this is about the way I size up the difficulty: Of course Redruth was jostled a good deal by this duck who had money to play ball with who tried to cut him out of his girl. So he goes around, naturally, and asks her if the game is still square. Well, nobody wants a guy cutting in with buggies and gold bonds when he’s got an option on a girl. Well, he goes around to see her. Well, maybe he’s hot, and talks like the proprietor, and forgets that an engagement ain’t always a lead-pipe cinch. Well, I guess that makes Alice warm under the lacy yoke. Well, she answers back sharp. Well, he–“

“Say!” interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, “if you could put up a windmill on every one of them ‘wells’ you’re using, you’d be able to retire from business, wouldn’t you?”

The windmill man grinned good-naturedly.

“Oh, I ain’t no /Guy de Mopassong/,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this: ‘Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,’ says she; ‘but he takes me riding and buys me theatre tickets, and that’s what you never do. Ain’t I to never have any pleasure in life while I can?’ ‘Pass this chatfield- chatfield thing along,’ says Redruth;–‘hand out the mitt to the Willie with creases in it or you don’t put your slippers under my wardrobe.’

“Now that kind of train orders don’t go with a girl that’s got any spirit. I bet that girl loved her honey all the time. Maybe she only wanted, as girls do, to work the good thing for a little fun and caramels before she settled down to patch George’s other pair, and be a good wife. But he is glued to the high horse, and won’t come down. Well, she hands him back the ring, proper enough; and George goes away and hits the booze. Yep. That’s what done it. I bet that girl fired the cornucopia with the fancy vest two days after her steady left. George boards a freight and checks his bag of crackers for parts unknown. He sticks to Old Booze for a number of years; and then the aniline and aquafortis gets the decision. ‘Me for the hermit’s hut,’ says George, ‘and the long whiskers, and the buried can of money that isn’t there.’