tar on ye that your feet stuck every time you stood still in one place;
you married my sister like you'd ketch a woodchuck; you've stuck your
fingers into my business in her name--but that's jest about as fur
as you can go with me. There was only one man ever tried to advise
me about gitting married--and he's still a cripple. There was no man
ever tried to recite love poetry to me. You take fair warnin'."

"Then you ain't willin' to listen to my experience, considerin' that
I've been a worse hard-shell than you ever was in marriage matters,
and now see the errors of my ways?" The Cap'n was blinking up
wistfully.

"It means that I take ye by your heels and snap your head off," rasped
Ward, tucking his sleeves away from his corded wrists. "You ain't
got your club with you this time."

The Cap'n sighed resignedly.

"Now," went on the Colonel, with the vigorous decision of a man who
feels that he has got the ascendency, "you talk about something that
amounts to something. That stumpage on number eight is mostly cedar
and hackmatack, and I've got an offer from the folks that want
sleepers for the railroad extension."

He went on with facts and figures, but the Cap'n listened with only
languid interest. He kept sighing and wrinkling his brows, as though
in deep rumination on a matter far removed from the stumpage question.
When the agreement of sale was laid before him he signed with a
blunted lead-pencil, still in his trance.