"Can one of you gents tell me," he asked, "where such a lady as Miss Phar"--he consulted a folded paper that he held in his hand--"Pharleena Pike lives about here?" He was an elderly man with a swollen nose, striated with purple veins. Under his arm he carried a bundle done up in meat-paper. There was a queer glint of excitement in the eyes of the Cap'n. But he did not speak. He referred the matter to Ward with a jab of his thumb. "What do you want to know where Miss Pike lives for?" demanded the Colonel, looking the stranger over with great disfavor. "None of your business," replied the man of the swollen nose, promptly. "I've asked a gent's question of one I took to be a gent, and I'd like a gent's reply." "You see," said Cap'n Sproul to the stranger, with a confidential air, as though he were proposing to impart the secret of the Colonel's acerbity, "Colonel Ward here is--" "You go 'long two miles, swing at the drab school-house, and go to the second white house on the left-hand side of the road!" shouted Ward, hastily breaking in on the explanation. His thin cheeks flushed angrily. The man shuffled on. "Why don't you print it on a play-card that I'm engaged to Pharlina Pike and hang it on the fence there?" the Colonel snorted, wrathfully, whirling on the Cap'n. "Didn't it ever occur to you that some things in this world ain't none of your business?" The Cap'n sighed with the resigned air that he had been displaying during the week past. "Lemme see, where was I?" went on the Colonel, surlily. "I was sayin', wasn't I, that I didn't see how I'd let you stick yourself into this fam'ly as you've done? It's time now for you and me to git to a reck'nin'. There's blamed liars round here snick'rin' in their whiskers, and sayin' that you've backed me down. Now--" Another man was at the fence, and interrupted with aggravating disregard of the Colonel's intentness on the business in hand. This stranger was short and squat, stood with his feet braced wide apart, and had a canvas bag slung over his shoulder. His broad face wore a cheery smile. "I've beat nor'west from the railroad, fetched a covered bridge on the port quarter, shipmates," he roared, jovially, "and here I be, bearin's lost and dead-reck'nin' skow-wowed." "Seems to be your breed," sneered Ward to the Cap'n. "What's that he's sayin', put in human language?" "I'm chartered for port--port"--he also referred to a folded paper--"to port Furliny Pike, som'eres in this latitude. Give me p'ints o' compass, will ye?" Ward leaped to his feet and strode toward the fence, his long legs working like calipers. "What do ye want of Pharline Pike?" he demanded, angrily. "None of your business," replied the cheerful sailor. "If this is the way landlubbers take an honest man's hail, ye're all jest as bad as I've heard ye was." "I'm a mind to cuff your ears," yapped the Colonel. The other glanced up the angular height of his antagonist.