“You surprise me,” said the Colonel, looking blankly over his spectacles. “I didn’t know there was any corn left. And a few hogs didn’t seem worth wasting time about. I don’t go into such matters, dear boy,--cotton is my strong suit. Cotton is the only play.” “You spent your time in the war mostly on the firing line, Colonel. Somebody ought to be mighty thankful you were not in the quartermaster’s office. That ham we cut to-day came from the store, and the cook tells me so does every pound of lard that goes into your frying pan, and all the bacon you furnish to your force of hands. And yet you have here an ample lot of bacon on the hoof and abundance of good feed to fatten it.” The Colonel appraised the logic and sat humiliated and silent. “I had the shoats all marked and sent the mark to the county court to be registered. And now you’ll eat your own meat after January or go without,” said Treherne sternly, in command of the situation. By some accident, searching in the Colonel’s desk for an envelope or some such matter, Treherne chanced to discover a receipt for a bill which the old gentleman had carelessly paid twice. “I took his word, of course,” said the Colonel in vicarious abasement, “as the word of a gentleman and an old soldier.” “An old soldier on the back track generally. I remember him well,” said Treherne uncompromisingly. “He shall refund as sure as my name is Treherne.” And he did refund, protesting that the matter was an accident, an oversight, which excuses the Colonel accepted in good faith and brought back to the skeptical Hugh Treherne. “So queer those mistakes never happen to your advantage, Colonel,” he snarled, and although his contention was obviously logical, the Colonel listened dubiously. In truth, Colonel Kenwynton was of a different animus, of a dead day, of a species as extinct as the Plesiosaurus. He could not even adapt himself to the conditions of his survival. He could neither hear nor speak through the telephone, although all his faculties were unimpaired. He held himself immune from diseases of modern diagnosis; for him there was no microbe, no appendicitis, no neurasthenia. His credulity revolted against the practicability of wireless telegraphy and aviation. He clove to his old books, and, except for the newspapers, he read nothing that had been printed within the last fifty years. His ideas of amusement were those of previous generations. He was a skilled sportsman, a dead shot, indeed; his play at billiards held the record at his club; he was versed in many games of chance and had the nerve to back his hand or his opinion to the limit of his power.