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“What’d you stop at the winery fer?” interrupted the younger man savagely.

“Why, I tole ye,–Forrester wanted to see me on business. I stopped to see Forrester, Lysander. What else’d I stop fer? I was in a big hurry, too, an’ I vum I hated to stop, but I hed to. When a man like Forrester wants to see you”–

“How’d you know he wanted to see you?” demanded Sproul.

The old man gave his questioner a look of maudlin surprise.

“Why, he tole me so hisself; how else’d I find it out? I was a-settin’ there in the winery on a kaig, an’ he come an’ tole me he wanted to see me on business. ‘Pears to me you’re duller ‘n common, Lysander.” The speaker began to gather courage from his own ready comprehension of intricacies which evidently seemed to puzzle his son-in-law. “Why, sho,–yes, Lysander, don’t ye see?” he added encouragingly.

“Oh, yes, I see,–I see,” repeated Lysander sarcastically. “It’s as clear as mud. Now, look here,” he added, turning upon his visitor sternly, “you let Forrester alone. You don’t know any more about business than a hog does about holidays, an’ you know it, an’ Forrester knows it. You’ll put your foot in it, that’s what you’ll do.”

The old man looked pensively at one foot and then at the other, as if speculating on the probable damage from such a catastrophe.

“I’m sure I dunno,” he said plaintively. “Forrester ‘peared to think I ought to come; he tole me why, but I vum I’ve fergot.” He took off his hat and gazed into it searchingly, as if the idea that had mysteriously escaped from his brain might have lodged in the crown.

Lysander fell to work with an energy born of disgust for another’s uselessness.

“Seein’ I’m here, I reckon nobody’ll objeck to my payin’ my respecks to the old woman,” continued the newcomer, glancing from the crown of his hat to Lysander’s impassive face with covert inquiry.

“I guess if you c’n stand it, the rest of us’ll have to,” sneered his son-in-law. “I’ve advised you over ‘n’ over again to steer clear of the old woman; but there’s no law agen a man courtin’ his own wife, even if she don’t give ‘im much encouragement.”

The old man put on his hat, and shuffled uneasily toward the house. Lysander stopped his work, and looked after him with a whimsical, irreverent grimace.

“You’re a nice old customer, you are; an’ Forrester’s ‘nother. I wish to the livin’ gracious the old woman’d send you a-kitin’; but she won’t; she’ll bark at you all day, but she won’t bite. Women’s queer.”

Mrs. Withrow was engaged in what she called “workin’ the bread into the pans.” She received her dejected spouse with a snort of disapproval.

“When the donkey come a-clatterin’ up to the door, I knowed there was another follerin’,” she said acridly. “Come in an’ set down. I s’pose you’re tired: you mostly are.”

The old man sidled sheepishly into the room and seated himself, and his wife turned her back upon him and fell to kneading vigorously a mass of dough that lay puffing and writhing on the floured end of a pine table.

“I jess come on Forrester’s ‘count,” he began haltingly: “that is, he didn’t want me to come, but I wasn’t goin’ to do what Forrester said. I ain’t a-carin’ fer Forrester. I wasn’t goin’ to take a trip ‘way up here jess because he wanted me to, so I didn’t. I”–

“Shut up!” said his wife savagely, without turning her head.

The visitor obeyed, evidently somewhat relieved to escape even thus ignominiously from the bog into which his loquacity was leading him.

The old woman thumped and pounded the mass of dough until the small tenement shook. Then, after much shaping and some crowding, she consigned her six rather corpulent loaves to “the pans,” and turned on her nominal lord.

He had fallen asleep, with his head dropped forward on his breast: his hat had fallen off, and lay in his lap in a receptive attitude, as if expecting that the head would presently drop into it.