On his way down the hill he was obliged to marshal a small host of reasons for hanging on to his job; the desire to quit then and there was looming large, potent, imperative. He was still scowling when he tramped into the office of the tavern where many loafers were assembled. Through the haze of tobacco smoke he saw Martin Brophy beckoning, and went to the desk. Brophy ran his smutted finger along under a name; "Mrs. Dana Haines Everett, New York City." "She has been asking for you. Matter o' business, she says. I've had to give her the front parlor for her room. Say, she's the kind that gets what she goes after, I reckon. Is eating her supper served in there private. Never was done in my tavern before." "Business--with me?" demanded Latisan. "Brophy, what's her own business in these parts?" "Can't seem to find out," admitted the landlord, and the young man bestowed on Brophy an expansive grin which was a comment on the latter's well-known penchant for gimleting in search of information. "Will say, however, that she's a widder--grass if I ain't much mistook--believes that a woman is equal to a man and should have all a man's privileges about going around by her lonesome if she so feels." "Well, you seem to have extracted a fair amount of information, considering that she's hardly got her feet planted." "Oh," confessed Brophy, "it came out because I made her mad when I hinted that it was kind of queer for a woman to be traveling around alone up here. Well, now that they're voting, you can look for 'most anything. What shall I tell her from you when I take in her pie?" "I'll wait on the lady after I eat my supper." When the drive master was ushered into the parlor-presence by the landlord, the lady was sitting in front of an open Franklin stove, smoking a cigarette. She had made a change in attire since her arrival, the new garb suggesting that she proposed to suit herself to the nature of the region to which she had come. She was in knickerbocker costume, had tipped back her chair, one foot on the hearth and the other foot propped on her knee, and she asked Latisan to sit down, pointing to a chair beside her. She offered a cigarette with a real masculine offhandedness. The caller faltered something about a pipe. She insisted that he smoke his pipe. "It rather puts strangers at their ease, don't you think, a little tobacco haze in the room?" Latisan, packing the bowl of his briar, agreed. "I take it that you're well acquainted with this region?" "Fairly so, though I know the Tomah country better." "You're a guide, I understand." "I don't understand where you got that information, madam," replied the drive master, a bit pricked.