"Follansbee he says they report fifty below at White River," a man sitting by the stove informed him. Coogan nodded and approached the counter. "Give me a plug, Miss Sophy," he told the girl who sat at a rough counter, adding figures. "The wind's gettin' real sharp and I got the nose most friz off'n my face." The girl rose, with a yawn, and handed him the tobacco. She swept his ten-cent piece in a drawer and sat down again. One of the men lounging about the great white-topped stove in the middle of the room pointed to Coogan's coat. "Ye're that careless, Pete," he said. "I 'low that's a bundle o' thousand dollar bills as is droppin' off'n yer coat." The old section foreman looked down. "Oh! I'd most forgot. This here's some kind o' paper I picked up on the track. Beats anything how passengers chucks things off. Mike Smith 'most got killed last week with an empty bottle. Lucky he had his big muskrat cap on. May be ye'd like to see it, Miss Sophy? Guess my old woman wouldn't have no use for it as it don't seem to have any picters in it." He was about to place it on the counter when one of the men took it from his hand and held it under the hanging oil lamp. "Why!" he chuckled, somewhat raspingly. "It's just what Sophy needs real bad. Ye wants ter study that real careful, Sophy. It'll show ye as there's just as good fish in the sea as was ever took out of it." The girl leaned far out over the counter and snatched the paper away from him. "Yes, there's just as good fish as that there Ennis lad," repeated the man. A single glance had acquainted Sophy with the title. It was the _Matrimonial Journal_. She flung it down to her feet, angrily. "You get out of here with your Ennis!" she cried. "I wouldn't--wouldn't marry him if he was the last man on earth. I--I just despise him!" "And that's real lucky for ye," snickered the man. "I heard him say--lemme see--yes, 'bout three-four days ago, as he wasn't nowise partial ter carrots. It's a wegetable as he couldn't never bear the sight of." The girl's hand went up to her fine head of auburn hair and a deep red rose from her cheeks to its roots. Her narrow lips became a mere slit in her face and her steely eyes flashed. "And--and he's the kind as thinks himself a gentleman!" she hissed out. "Get out o' here, all of ye! There ain't a man in Carcajou as I'd wipe my boots on. Clear out o' here, I tell ye!" The three men left, Pete silently and disapprovingly, the other two guffawing. "I don't believe as how that lad Ennis ever said anything o' the kind," declared the foreman. "He's a fine bye, he is, and it ain't like him." "Of course he didn't," the village joker assured him. "But 'twas too much of a chance ter get a rise out er Sophy for me to lose it. Ain't she the hot-tempered thing? Just the same she wuz dead sot on gettin' him, we all know that, an' she's mad clear through."