To wallop humans is not right, But--wal, there’s things ye have to do!” --From “Meditations of Deacon Burgess.” The next morning the Squire was busy at the cook-stove at daybreak. He had joyfully turned old Aunt Rhoda over to Hiram’s _ménage_, and he relished the idea that he could resume his own way of living. As he tied on his canvas apron he reflected contritely that perhaps he was feeling a bit too good about being alone again. It wasn’t wholly brotherly. Then in his mind he laid it all to Aunt Rhoda’s cooking. She had frizzled the bacon into black chips and fried the steak until it would do for a boot-tap, and when the Squire had expostulated, had defiantly told him that he’d better stick to his law books and not try to tell her, after sixty years at the cook-stove, how to get up “a mess of vittles.” She had obliged him to eat huge hot dinners at noon that made him as sleepy as a stuffed anaconda for hours as he sat in his arm-chair in the office, trying to read his books. She had expected him to make out a supper on plum preserves and hot cream of tartar biscuits, and he had already felt the first gnawings of dyspepsia. “Now for my steak!” he said aloud. It was a generous slice, thick as a cushion and bordered with the cream-hued fat that Aunt Rhoda obstinately threw away when she pared his steak into thinner slices in order to fry them into parchment-like strips. It sizzled on the grid cheerily, the coffee--with its heaping “measure for the pot” and two for himself--gave forth an odour that promised better than the old housekeeper’s slaty-hued brew, and he was just cracking his eggs for his omelet when there was a rap at the door. The Squire called an invitation over his shoulder, and the visitor came in. It was the Mayo youth. His hair, that was usually slicked so smoothly, was tousled and it hung in strings about his face. He had evidently run all the way up the street, for he was out of breath and panted with open mouth like a dog as he thrust toward the Squire a bit of paper that he pinched by one corner. “Lay it down on the table,” directed the lawyer, shortly. “Can’t you see that both my hands are full?” The young man stumbled toward him and shoved the paper into his hands, evidently unconscious that the Squire had spoken. It fell into the bowl and the lawyer picked it out gingerly, muttering his ire. Mayo then grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, trying to utter intelligible speech, but he could only blubber and hiccup. “You infernal calf,” stormed the lawyer; “sit down in that chair and get your breath and let me alone!” He pushed the youth across the room and plumped him down with a thud that snapped his open jaws together. “She’s gug-gug-gone, Squire Look!” Mayo managed to squeak. The lawyer shook the paper to free it of the egg, looking ruefully toward his bowl as he did so. Then he read the note, his brows knotting.