"Then aren't we at Colchester yet?"

"No, madam. It is some little ride yet. If you will allow me I shall
be happy to let you know when we arrive. And if you are without any
one to help you off with your luggage, as it is raining and likely to
continue--"

"Oh, thank you, sir, but Jabez will meet me. I must have dozed off,
and when I heard that noise--"

"Which I regret exceedingly, madam," interposed the military-appearing
traveler with another bow.

The old lady again composed herself. The tall man bowed again, resumed
his seat and tried to read, but his feelings had been too much ruffled,
it was evident, to allow a peaceful resumption of his former mood.

"The idea! The very idea!" he murmured, speaking to the window,
against the glass of which the raindrops were now dashing impotently,
and as though angry at not being admitted to the warmth and light of
the car. For dusk had fallen and the electric lights were aglow in the
Pullman, making it a very cosy place in contrast to the damp and muddy
country through which the train was rushing.

"Gad! what's the world coming to when a man can't read what he likes
without every whippersnapper interrupting him with--Shag! I say,
Shag!" he went on, raising his voice from a murmured whisper to a
louder command. "Porter, send my man here! Where's that rascal Shag?"

"Yes, sah, Colonel! I'm right yeah! Yeah I is, Colonel!" and a negro,
with a picturesque fringe of white, kinky hair, shuffled from the
porter's quarters, where he had been enjoying a quiet chat with the
black knight of the whisk broom. "What is you' desire, Colonel?"

"I want peace and quiet, Shag! That's what I want! Twice I've tried
to read my book undisturbed, and that insufferable train-boy--that
rascal who probably doesn't know an ant-fly from a piece of cheese--has
bothered me with books and papers. He ought to know I've vowed not to
look at a paper for two weeks, and, as for books--"

Colonel Robert Lee Ashley closed his volume, which bore, in gold
letters on the front green cover the words: "Walton's Complete Angler,"
and laughed silently, the wrinkles of his face and around his
steel-blue eyes sending the frown scurrying for some unseen trench.

"Shag," asked the colonel, still chuckling, "what do you think that
nincompoop had the infernal audacity to offer me in the way of a book?"

"I ain't got no idea, Colonel--not th' leastest in th' world!"

"He offered me a--detective story, Shag!"

"Oh, mah good Lord, Colonel! Not _really_?"

"Yes, he did, Shag! A detective story!"

"Oh, mah good Lord!"

Shag, which was all Colonel Ashley ever called his servant, though the
colored valet rejoiced in the prefixes of George Washington, threw up
his hands in horror, and shook his head. The colonel, after a period
of silent, chuckling mirth, opened his book again and read:

"And, after this manner, you may catch a trout in a hot evening. When,
as you walk by a brook, and shall hear or see him leap at flies, then
if you get a grasshopper--"

"Gad! that's the life!" softly voiced the colonel. Then, turning to
the still waiting Shag, he went on: "There's nobody in the wide world
who can bring peace and quiet to an angry mind like my friend Izaak
Walton, is there, Shag?"

"No, sah, Colonel, they isn't! _Nobody_!"

"Of course not! Gad! I'm glad you agree with me, Shag!"

"Yes, sah, Colonel."

"Um! Here, you go and give that newsboy a quarter. Tell him I didn't
mean anything; but never again must he interrupt me when he sees me
with Walton in my hand. Anything but that! It's positively indecent!"

"Yes, sah, Colonel. I done tell him that."

"And it--it's sacrilegious, Shag!"

"Yes, sah, Colonel; 'tis that!"

"Well, tell him so, and give him a half dollar. Now don't disturb me
again until we get to Colchester. How's the weather, Shag?"

"Well, sah, Colonel, it's--it's sorter--moist, Colonel!"

"Um! Well, it'll be better by to-morrow, I expect, when we go fishing.
And be careful of my rods when you take the grips off. If you so much
as scratch the tip of even my oldest one, I--I'll--well, you know what
I'll do to you, Shag!"

"Yes, sah, I knows, Colonel!"


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