"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
passionate heights of intoxication to the maudlin stage whither he
was drifting. The fire of his red eyes became filmed and dim, an equal
moisture gathered in his throat as he pressed Abner's hand with drunken
fervor. "Thash so! your thinking o' me an' Mish Byersh is like troo
fr'en'," he said thickly. "I wosh only goin' to shay that wotever Mish
Byersh wosh--even if she wosh wife o' yours--she wosh--noble woman! Such
a woman," continued Mr. Byers, dreamily regarding space, "can't have too
many husbands."

"You jest sit back here a minit, and have a quiet smoke till I come
back," said Abner, handing him his tobacco plug. "I've got to give the
butcher his order--but I won't be a minit." He secured the decanter as