he's rightly named.'

"And look him up I did, two years afterward. He was all she
said--solid and stolid, the Ox--shuffling around and waiting on
the tables.

"'You need a wife to help you,' I said.

"'I had one once,' was his answer.

"'Widower?'

"'Yep. She went loco. She always said the heat of the cooking
would get her, and it did. Pulled a gun on me one day and ran
away with some Siwashes in a canoe. Caught a blow up the coast
and all hands drowned.'"

Trefethan devoted himself to his glass and remained silent.

"But the girl?" Milner reminded him.

"You left your story just as it was getting interesting,
tender. Did it?"

"It did," Trefethan replied. "As she said herself, she was
savage in everything except mating, and then she wanted her own
kind. She was very nice about it, but she was straight to the
point. She wanted to marry me.

"'Stranger,' she said, 'I want you bad. You like this sort of