"Oh, hang him and the horse! you've told me that three times; what of it?" "Smith, he's out here to make a new record for himself, at whatever cost!" "And do you imagine Ned Ferry hasn't thought of that?" "Ah-h, there are times when a man hasn't got his thinking powers; you ought to know that, Smith,--" "Mr. Gholson, what do you mean by that?" "Oh! I certainly didn't mean anything against you, Smith. Why is your manner so strange to me to-day? Oh, Smith, if you knew what--if I could speak to you in sacred confidence--I--I wouldn't injure Ned Ferry in your eyes, nor in anybody's; I only tell you what I do tell so you may help me to help him. But he's staying here, Smith, and keeping you here, to be near one whose name--without her a-dreaming of it--is already coupled with--why,--why, what made you start that a-way again, Smith?" "Nothing; I didn't start. 'Coupled with somebody's name,' you say. With whose? Go on." "With his, Smith, and most injuriously. He's here to tempt her to forget she's not--" He faltered. "Free?" said I, and he nodded with tragic solemnity. "You know who I mean, of course?" "Certainly; you mean Mrs. Sessions." He shook his head bitterly. "Oh, well, then, of course I know. How am I to help you to help him; help him to do what?" "O--oh! to tear himself away from her, Smith. I want you to appeal to him. He's taken a great shine to you. You can appeal to his feeling for romance--poetry--whatever he calls his hell-fired--I mean his unfortunate impiety. You know how, and I don't. And there you reach the foundations of his character, as far as it's got any; there's his conscience if it's anywhere!" I find myself giving but a faint impression of the spirit in which Gholson spoke; it went away beyond a mere backbiting mood and became a temper so vindictive and so venomously purposeful that I was startled; his condition seemed so fearfully like that of the old paralytic when he whined "That's not our way." "Smith," my companion went on, "we ought to protect Ned Ferry from himself!" The words came through his clenched teeth. "And even more we ought to protect her. Who's to do it if we don't? Smith, I believe Providence has been a-preparing you to do this, all through these last three nights and days!" He looked at me for an answer until I became frightened. Was my late folly known to this crawling maligner after all? A sweet-scented preparation I've had, thought I, but aloud I said only, "If Ned Ferry clears out, I suppose we must clear out, too." "Why, eh,--I--I don't know that my movements need have anything to do with his. Yours, of course,--" "Yes," I interrupted, beginning to boil. "I know," he said, "that comes hard; you'll have to tear _yourself_ away--" He stared at me and hushed. A panic was surging through me; must I be brought to book by such as he? "Mr. Gholson," I cried, all scorn without, all terror within; "Mr. Gholson, I--Mr. Gholson, sir!--" and set my jaws and heaved for breath.