"Well, now, I heard about that woman. She was a tall, thin creature, with no liver left at all, and her chills came three times a week. She wouldn't work; she was red-headed and had only one straight eye; and as for a tongue--well, I only hope, Colonel Blount, that you and I will never have a chance to meet anything like that. Of course, I know she was killed. Her husband just hated her before she died, but blame _me_, just as soon as she was _dead_, he loved her more than if she was his sweetheart all over again. Now, that's how it goes. Say, I want to tell you, Colonel Blount, this road is plumb beneficent, if only for the fact that it develops human affection the way it does. Fifteen dollars! Why, I tell you, sir, fifteen dollars was _more_ than enough for that woman." He turned indignantly on the board-pile. "I reckon," said Colonel Blount, "that you would say that about my neighbor Jim Bowles' cow?" "Certainly. I know about that cow, too. She was twenty years old and on her last legs. Road kills her, and all at once she becomes a dream of heifer loveliness. _I_ know." "I reckon," said Colonel Blount, still more grimly; "I reckon if that damned claim agent was to come here, he would just about say that fifteen dollars was enough for my filly." "I shouldn't wonder. Now, look here, Colonel Blount. You see, I'm a railroad man, and I'm able to see the other side of these things." "Oh, well, all right," said Blount, "but that don't bring my filly back. You can't get Himyah blood every day in the week. That filly would have seen Churchill Downs in her day, if she had lived." "Yes; and if she had, you would have had to back her, wouldn't you? You would have trained that filly and paid a couple of hundred for it. You would have fitted her at the track and paid several hundred more. You would have bet a couple of thousand, anyway, as a matter of principle, and, like enough, you'd have lost it. Now, if this road paid you fifteen dollars for that filly and saved you twenty-five hundred or three thousand into the bargain, how ought you to feel about it? Are you twenty-five hundred behind or fifteen ahead?" Colonel Calvin Blount had now feverishly finished his julep, and as the other stopped, he placed his glass beside him on the board-pile and swung a long leg across, so that he sat directly facing his enigmatical guest. The latter, in the enthusiasm of his argument, swung into a similar position, and so they sat, both hammering on the board between them. "Well, I would like to see that damned claim agent offer me fifteen dollars for that filly," said Blount. "I might take fifty, for the sake of the road; but fifteen--" "Well, what would you do?" "Well, by God, sir, if I saw that claim agent--" "Well, by God, sir, _I'm_ that claim agent; and I _do_ offer you fifteen dollars for that filly, right now!" "What! You--" "Yes, me!" "Fifteen dollars!" "Yes, sir, fifteen dollars."