"Mr. Ardmore"--and Jerry pointed at him with a bronze paper-cutter to make sure of his attention--"Mr. Ardmore, if you ever imply again by act, word or deed that I winked at you I shall never, never speak to you again. I should think that a man with a nice sister like Mrs. Atchison would have a better opinion of women than you seem to have. I never saw you until you came to my father's house to tell me about the jug--and you know I didn't. And as for that Barbara Osborne, while I don't doubt that even in South Carolina a Daughter of the Seminole War might wink at a gentleman in a moment of extreme provocation, I doubt if she did, for she lacks animation, and has no more soul than a gum overshoe." The obvious inconsistency of this pronouncement caused Ardmore to frown in the stress of his thought; and he stared helplessly along the line of the accusing paper-cutter into Jerry's eyes. "Oh, cheer up!" she cried in her despair of him; "and forget it, forget it, forget it! I'll say this to you, Mr. Ardmore, that if I ever winked at you--and I never, never did--I'm sorry I did it! Some time when you haven't so much work on your hands as you have this morning just think that over and let me know where you land. And now, look at these things, please." "What is all this stuff?" he demanded, as she tossed him a pile of papers. "They refer to the application for pardon of a poor man who's going to be hanged for murder to-morrow unless we do something for him; and he has a wife and three little children, and he has never committed any other crime but to break into a smoke-house and steal a side of bacon." "Did he shoot in self-defense, or how was it?" asked Ardmore judicially. "He killed a painless dentist who pulled the wrong tooth," answered Jerry, referring to the papers. "If that's all I don't think we can stand for hanging him. I read a piece against capital punishment in a magazine once and the arguments were very strong. The killing of a dentist should not be a crime anyhow, and if you know how to pardon a man, why let's do it; but we'd better wait until the last minute, and then send telegram to the sheriff to stop the proceedings just before he pulls the string, which makes it most impressive, and gives a better effect." "I believe you are right about it," said Jerry. "There's an old pardon right here in this bundle which we can use. It was made out for another man who stole a horse that afterwards died, which papa said was a mitigating circumstance; but the week before his execution the man escaped from jail before papa could pardon him."