just as well, as the talk I was wantin' with ye was kinder betwixt and
between ourselves, and not hotel business. My name's Byers, and my wife
let on she met ye down here."
For the first time it struck Abner as incongruous that another man
should call Rosalie "his wife," although the fact of her remarriage
had been made sufficiently plain to him. He accepted it as he would an
earthquake, or any other dislocation, with his usual tolerant smile, and
held out his hand.
Mr. Byers took it, seemingly mollified, and yet inwardly
disturbed,--more even than was customary in Abner's guests after dinner.
"Have a drink with me," he suggested, although it had struck him that
Mr. Byers had been drinking before dinner.
"I'm agreeable," responded Byers promptly; "but," with a glance at the
crowded bar-room, "couldn't we go somewhere, jest you and me, and have a
quiet confab?"
"I reckon. But ye must wait till we get her off."
Mr. Byers started slightly, but it appeared that the impedimental sex in
this case was the coach, which, after a slight feminine hesitation, was
at last started. Whereupon Mr. Langworthy, followed by a negro with a
tray bearing a decanter and glasses, grasped Mr. Byers's arm, and walked
along a small side veranda the depth of the house, stepped off, and
apparently plunged with his guest into the primeval wilderness.
It has already been indicated that the site of the Big Flume Hotel had
been scantily cleared; but Mr. Byers, backwoodsman though he was, was
quite unprepared for so abrupt a change. The hotel, with its noisy crowd
and garish newness, although scarcely a dozen yards away, seemed lost
completely to sight and sound. A slight fringe of old tin cans, broken
china, shavings, and even of the long-dried chips of the felled trees,
once crossed, the two men were alone! From the tray, deposited at the
foot of an enormous pine, they took the decanter, filled their glasses,
and then disposed of themselves comfortably against a spreading root.
The curling tail of a squirrel disappeared behind them; the far-off tap
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