He clumped up the little flight of steps that led from the lower left-hand box to the stage. Clump, clump, clump. Irresistibly Parthy’s eyes peered sharply in pursuit of the muddy tracks that followed each step. She snorted indignantly. Across the stage, his beard waggling up and down as his jaws worked slowly, rhythmically on a wedge of Honest Scrap. As he approached Julie’s doorway he took off his cap and rubbed his pate with his palm, sure sign of great mental perturbation in this monumental old leviathan. The yellow skin of his knobby bald dome-like head shone gold in the rays of the late morning sun that came in through the high windows at the side of the stage. He stood a moment, chewing, and peering mildly into the dimness of the bedroom, Sphinx-like, it seemed that he never would speak. He stood, champing. The _Cotton Blossom_ troupe waited. They had not played melodrama for years without being able to sense it when they saw it. He spoke. “Seems that skunk Pete’s up to something.” They waited. The long tobacco-stained beard moved up and down, up and down. “Skinned out half an hour back streaking toward town like possessed. He yanked that picture of Julie out of the hall there. Seen him. I see good deal goes on around here.” Steve sprang to his feet with a great ripping river oath. “I’ll kill him this time, the ——” “Seen you take that first picture out, Steve.” The deep red that had darkened Steve’s face and swelled the veins on his great neck receded now, leaving his china-blue eyes staring out of a white and stricken face. “I never did! I never did!” Julie sat up, clutching her wrapper at the throat. She laughed shrilly. “What would he want to steal my picture for! His own wife’s picture. Likely!” “So nobody in this town’d see it, Julie,” said Windy, mildly. “Listen. Fifty years piloting on the rivers you got to have pretty good eyesight. Mine’s as good to-day as it was time I was twenty. I just stepped down from the texas to warn you I see Pete coming along the levee with Ike Keener. Ike’s the sheriff. He’ll be in here now any minute.” “Let him,” Andy said, stoutly. “Our license is paid. Sheriff’s as welcome around this boat as anybody. Let him.”