"Don't know but what I _am_ some'at crazy in good earnest, Betsy, since I come to think it all over. I'm r'ally onto it a right smart. What'd you think, Betsy, if I'd commence talkin' 'oman to ye?" "Luke, Luke! are you crazy? Is your mind clean gone out of your poor smoky head?" "That's not much of a answer to my question." "Well, what _do_ you mean, _anyhow_?" "I mean business, that's what!" "Luke!" "Yes'm." "Do try to act sensible now. What is it, Luke? What makes your eyes look so strange and dance about so? What do you mean by all this queer talk?" Luke finished combing, and, going to the table, sat down and was proceeding to discuss the fried chicken and coffee without further remark, but Betsy was not so easily balked. She, like most red haired women, wished her questions to be fully and immediately answered, wherefore some indications of a storm began to appear. Luke smiled a quiet little smile that had hard work getting out through his beard. Betsy trotted her foot under the table. Her hand trembled as she poured the coffee--trembled so violently that she scalded her left thumb. It was about time for Luke to speak or have trouble, so, in a very gentle voice, he said: "Well, I saw a gal--a gal an' her father, I reckon--go by this mornin'." "Well, what of it? S'pose there's plenty of girls and their fathers, ain't there?" snapped Betsy. Luke drew a chicken leg through his mouth, laid down the bone, leered comically at his sister from under his bushy eyebrows, and said: "But the gal was purty, Betsy--purty as a pictur', sweet as a peach, juicy an' temptin' as a ripe, red cored watermillion! You can't begin to guess how sweet an' nice she did look. My heart just flolloped and flopped about, an' it's at it yet!" "Luke Plunkett, you _are_ crazy! You're just as distracted as a blind dog in high rye. Drink a cup of hot coffee, Luke, and go lie down a bit, you'll feel better." The spinster was horrified beyond measure. She really thought her brother crazy. The man finished his meal in silence, smiling the while more grimly than before, after which he took his shot gun and a pan of salt and trudged off to a distant field to salt some cattle. He always carried his gun with him on such occasions, and not unfrequently brought back a brace of partridges or some young squirrels. As he strode along, thinking all the time of the girl in the carriage, he suddenly came upon a corps of engineers with transit, level, rod and chain, staking out, through the centre of a choice field, a line of survey for a railroad. In an instant he was like a roaring lion. He glared for a second or so at the intruders, then lowering his gun he charged them at a run, storming out as he did so: "What you doin' here, you onery cusses, you! Leave here! Get out! Scratch! Sift! Dern yer onery skins, I'll shoot every dog of ye! Git out 'n here, I say--out, out!"