Thus it happened that, while the Major and I were sitting enjoying an extraordinary season of calm, suddenly there came a thundering sound from the stairway. A troop of horse could hardly have made a greater uproar, and yet I knew that fewer than half a dozen people were ascending the steps. Some one stumbled and caught himself, and the multiplied and magnified reverberations were as loud as if the roof had caved in, carrying the better part of the structure with it. Some one laughed at the misstep, and the sound came to our ears with the deafening effect of an explosion. The party filed with a dull roar into one of the front rooms, the office of a harum-scarum young lawyer who had more empty bottles behind his door than he had ever had briefs on his desk. “Well, the great Gemini!” exclaimed Major Perdue, “how do you manage to stand that sort of thing?” I shrugged my shoulders and laughed, and was about to begin anew a very old tirade against caves and halls of thunder, when the Major raised a warning hand. Some one was saying—— “He hangs out right on ol’ Major Perdue’s lot. He’s got a wife there.” “By jing!” exclaimed another voice; “is that so? Well, I don’t wanter git mixed up wi’ the Major. He may be wobbly on his legs, but I don’t wanter be the one to run up ag’in ’im.” The Major pursed up his lips and looked at the ceiling, his attitude being one of rapt attention. “Shucks!” cried another; “by the time the ol’ cock gits his bellyful of dram, thunder wouldn’t roust ’im.” A shrewd, foxy, almost sinister expression came over the Major’s rosy face as he glanced at me. His left hand went to his goatee, an invariable signal of deep feeling, such as anger, grief, or serious trouble. Another voice broke in here, a voice that we both knew to be that of Larry Pulliam, a big Kentuckian who had refugeed to Halcyondale during the war. “Blast it all!” exclaimed Larry Pulliam, “I hope the Major will come out. Me an’ him hain’t never butted heads yit, an’ it’s gittin’ high time. Ef he comes out, you fellers jest go ahead with your rat-killin’. _I_’ll ’ten’ to him.” “Why, you’d make two of him, Pulliam,” said the young lawyer. “Oh, I’ll not hurt ’im; that is, not _much_—jest enough to let ’im know I’m livin’ in the same village,” replied Mr. Pulliam. The voice of the town bull could not have had a more terrifying sound. Glancing at the Major, I saw that he had entirely recovered his equanimity. More than that, a smile of sweet satisfaction and contentment settled on his rosy face, and stayed there. “I wouldn’t take a hundred dollars for that last remark,” whispered the Major. “That chap’s been a-raisin’ his hackle at me ever since he’s been here, and every time I try to get him to make a flutter he’s off and gone. Of course it wouldn’t do for me to push a row on him just dry so. But now——” The Major laughed softly, rubbed his hands together, and seemed to be as happy as a child with a new toy.