added with badly concealed anxiety.
"I reckon: there's the decree," returned Abner, with his usual resigned
acceptance of the fact.
"Mrs. Byers wuz allowin' ye wuz thinkin' of a second. How's that comin'
on?"
"Jest whar it was," returned Abner. "I ain't doin' anything yet. Ye see
I've got to tell the gal, naterally, that I'm di-vorced. And as that
isn't known hereabouts, I don't keer to do so till I'm pretty certain.
And then, in course, I've got to."
"Why hev ye 'got to'?" asked Byers abruptly.
"Because it wouldn't be on the square with the girl," said Abner. "How
would you like it if Mrs. Byers had never told you she'd been married to
me? And s'pose you'd happen to hev bin a di-vorced man and hadn't told
her, eh? Well," he continued, sinking back resignedly against the tree,
"I ain't sayin' anythin' but she'd hev got another di-vorce, and FROM
you on the spot--you bet!"
"Well! all I kin say is," said Mr. Byers, lifting his voice excitedly,
"that"--but he stopped short, and was about to fill his glass again from
the decanter when the hand of Abner stopped him.
"Ye've got ez much ez ye kin carry now, Byers," he said slowly, "and
that's about ez much ez I allow a man to take in at the Big Flume Hotel.
Treatin' is treatin', hospitality is hospitality; ef you and me was
squattin' out on the prairie I'd let you fill your skin with that pizen
and wrap ye up in yer blankets afterwards. But here at Big Flume, the
Stage Kempenny and the wimen and children passengers hez their rights."
He paused a moment, and added, "And so I reckon hez Mrs. Byers, and I
ain't goin' to send you home to her outer my house blind drunk. It's
mighty rough on you and me, I know, but there's a lot o' roughness in
this world ez hez to be got over, and life, ez far ez I kin see, ain't
all a clearin'."
Perhaps it was his good-humored yet firm determination, perhaps it was
his resigned philosophy, but something in the speaker's manner affected
Mr. Byers's alcoholic susceptibility, and hastened his descent from the
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