And within a week after that he returned a third time to put me on my guard against one or two more individuals who somehow had been overlooked by him in his previous visits. Rarely did he come out in the open and accuse anybody of anything. He was too crafty, too subtle for that. The major was a regular sutler. But he certainly did understand the art of planting the poison. Give him time enough, and he could destroy a fellow's confidence in the entire human race. He specialized in no single direction; his gifts were ample for all emergencies. When he tired of making you distrustful of those about you, or when temporarily he ran out of material, he knew the knack of making you distrustful of your own judgment. For example, there was the time, in the second month of our acquaintance I think it was, when he meandered in to inspect the work of renovation that had just been started on the stable. He spent perhaps ten minutes going over the premises, now and then uttering low, disparaging, clucking sounds under his breath. I followed him about fearsomely. I was distressed on account of the disclosures that I felt would presently be forthcoming. “Putting on a slate roof, eh?” he said when he was done with the investigation. “Expect it to stay put?” I admitted that such had been the calculation of the builder. “Nothing like being one of these here optimists,” he commented dryly. “But I want to tell you that it's the biggest mistake you ever made to put a slate roof on those sloping gables without sticking in some metal uprights to keep the snow from sliding off in a lump when the winter thaws come.” It had always seemed to me that snow had few enough pleasures as it was. Though I had given the subject but little thought, it appeared to me that if sliding off a roof gave the snow any satisfaction it would ill become me or any one else to interfere. I ventured to say as much. “I guess you don't get my meaning,” he explained. “When the snow starts sliding, if there's enough of it, it's purty sure to take most of those slates along with it. And then where'll you be, I want to know?” “Is--is it too late to put up some anti-sliding thingumbobs now?” I asked. “Oh, yes,” he said comfortingly; “it's too late now unless you ripped the whole job off and started all over again. I judge you'll just have to let Nature take its course. I see you've got a chimney that don't come over the ridge of the roof. Are you calculating that it'll draw?” “I rather hoped it would--that was the intention, I believe.”