“I didn’t really want to run away with her, Hiram, but she bossed me into it. I never was no hand to stand up for my rights. I could lift weights and let ‘em crack a marble block on my chest, but anyone with a limber tongue could allus talk me ’round--and I guess they allus can. I wish she’d stuck to you and let me alone.” His big hands trembled on his knees, and his weak face with its flabby chops had the wistful look one sees on a foxhound’s visage. “When did you give up the road?” he asked, evidently willing to change the subject. “Haven’t given it up,” snapped Hiram, scowling. “There’s the waggons over there, and the round-top and seats are stored, and I’ve got my elephant. I’m liable to buy a lemon and a square hunk of glass and start out again ’most any time.” Hiram couldn’t help winking his good eye at his old partner in “shenanigan,” though his face hardened again the moment after. Peak chuckled fulsome appreciation, Still eager to placate, he said: “I don’t suppose you really have to.” He blinked watery eyes at Hiram’s big watch chain with its bunch of charms, and at the ring on his thick finger, with its blazing stone. “Forty thousand or so in the bank and plenty more out at int’rest,” returned Hiram. He put both thumbs into the armholes of his vest. Then with the patronising air of the “well-fixed” he inquired: “How are you gettin’ your three squares nowadays?” “Lecture on Lost Arts and Free Love, mesmerise and cure stutterin’ in one secret lesson, pay in advance,” Peak explained listlessly. “But there ain’t the three squares in no such graft in these times. I ain’t got your head. I wish I’d been as sharp as you are and never let a woman whiffle me into a scrape.” Hiram glowed with the same warmth that he felt when “Figger-Four” daily regaled him with stories of how Myra Willard made life miserable for Kleber with her tongue and her folly. This gossip had been “Figger-Four’s” first recommendation to the notice of the showman, and Avery had sagaciously pursued it. Hiram now looked up at the man on the van with a pride that was gloomy, but none the less apparent. “Nobody ever come it over me,” he said in low tones, with a side glance to see that Avery didn’t overhear. “Still, another way you look at it, she did come it over me and so did----” He suddenly checked himself. “But she didn’t come it over you,” insisted Peak. “I’m the one she come it over, and look at me!” He made a despairing gesture that embraced all his pathetic belongings. “You’re the one that’s come out ‘unrivalled, stupendous and triumphant,’ as your full sheeters used to say. If I was any help in steerin’ her away I’m humbly glad of it, Hime, for I allus liked you.”