“Considering what kind of a man I was a few weeks ago, I'm having pretty hard work to explain to myself what I'm doing, sir.” The colonel knotted bushy brows. This person seemed to be playing with him. “Who told you to come here?” “The soul of a little girl who was named Rosemarie.” Colonel Dodd came out of his chair, thoroughly angry--and yet he repressed his anger. This person, more than ever, seemed to him to be a crank with vagaries. Farr put up a protesting palm. His tones trembled, and into them he put all the appeal a human voice can compass. “I know I astonish you, Colonel,” he added. “I astonish myself. I'm not much on self-analysis. I don't know just what has come over me the last few weeks. But they do say the Deity picks out queer instruments when He wants things done. Man to man, now, forgetting you're a mighty man and I'm a small one, won't you say you'll give the people of this state pure water instead of poison?” “You don't think you can stroll in here and coax me to build over the whole Consolidated system, do you?” “That isn't the idea at all, sir. Treat me simply as a voice--a jog of your conscience--a reminder. I'll go away and you'll never see me again.” “If you think the cranks in this state can influence me in the least item about running my own business you're the worst lunatic outside the state asylum,” declared the colonel, with passion. “You mean that what I have asked on behalf of women and children hasn't had any effect on you?” “Not the slightest. Get out!” In his present mood Colonel Dodd would not admit to this interloper that he planned reforms, and in that moment he unwittingly created his Frankenstein's monster. Farr retreated a couple of steps and bowed. “Colonel Dodd, in my part of the West we fellows had a little code: help a woman, always, everywhere; tote a tired child in our arms; and, in the case of a man who announced himself an enemy, give him fair notice when it came time to pull guns. Better get your weapon loose on your hip.” He bowed again and went out. Briggs rose from his knees and his master snapped an angry stare from the door that the young man had closed softly behind himself. “What kind of a resort is my office getting to be? Do you know who that devilish fool is, Briggs?” “No, sir. He has been hanging around here, that's all I know. I kept at him.” He made a little dab of his woodpecker beak. “But I couldn't find out anything from him.” “Well find out from somebody else, then. And get judge Warren on the 'phone for me.” When the bell rang and the colonel heard the voice of the Consolidated's corporation counsel greeting him on the wire he ordered the judge to come over at once. “Hell has just burned through here in three small patches,” stated the colonel, grimly. “The sooner we turn on the Consolidated hose, the better.”