“Well, I am not going to refuse the title.” Peterson laughed in a pleasurable way after Hoag had made a bald jest about the honor recently conferred upon him. “I am no born idiot, Mr. Hoag. I know some folks sort of poke fun at the new list of Georgia colonels after every gubernatorial race; but even a handle to a fellow's name like that helps now and then. Take Colonel Pangle there in Atlanta, our big criminal lawyer, you know. Why, he wasn't in the war; he never fired a shot or dodged a ball. He organized a little local military company in his home town. I don't reckon he had more than thirty men at any time, and his rank, at the best wouldn't have been above captain; but he was a dignified-looking fellow with a heavy mustache and goatee, and they called him Colonel on the spot, and when he moved to Atlanta the title followed him. The boys at the bank were disposed to joke when my commission came--saluting me like a bunch of jumping-jacks; but you bet I cut it out. Think little of yourself, and the world will do the same.' That's my motto. You noticed how nice the papers spoke about it, didn't you? Well, I stand in with the reporters. They are my political friends; we take a drink together now and then, and they know how I look at such things. I am hitting the bull's eye down there in that burg, Mr. Hoag, just as you've hit it here. We are two of a kind. It doesn't take much gray matter to succeed among these slow, ante-bellum leave-overs here in the South.” Hoag laughed heartily. “Oh, you are all right,” he said. “I've had my eye on you ever since you started out. As the sayin' is, you could make money on a rock in the middle of the ocean.” Peterson's features settled into rigidity suddenly, and he exhaled a tentative breath, as he held his cigar between his fingers and leaned toward his host. “As certain as I am about men, business deals, and politics, Mr. Hoag, I'm going to admit to you that I'm a country school-teacher--a knot on a log--when it comes to handling a woman. Don't you reckon every fellow is that way that is kind o' submerged, so to speak, in the affairs of the business world? I know I am a regular stick, and I don't know how to help myself.” “I reckon you are talkin' about Eth',” Hoag said, with more bluntness than a diplomat would have employed. “At least, I've wondered why you an' her both seem so offish. I don't reckon you come all the way up here on a holiday like this to talk business to _me_, an' as for Eth'--well, I can't make 'er out, that's all; an' what's the use to try? A woman is hard to understand when she is willin' to be understood, an' a devil to fathom when she ain't. Folks tell me some high-strung gals would ruther die than let a man know they are gone on 'im.”