LITMIR.BIZ

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a good opinion."

      "Won't have you!" gasped his parent. "A Stanbury won't take a Crocker!"

      "Madge Stanbury won't take this Crocker--which is all that matters."

      "The chit!" said Nanny.

      "The ninnyhammer!" cried Aunt Susan.

      "The sensible girl," answered Bartley. "She's found somebody better--a man as stands to work and will make a finer fashion of husband than ever I should."

      "How you can sit there and talk in that mean spirit passes me!" answered his mother. "Have a greater respect for yourself, and let that girl see to her dying day what a fool she's been."

      "Who is it? I suppose you got that much out of her?" asked Bartley's aunt.

      "It's David Bowden from Ditsworthy, and they've been tokened two days, so, you see, I was a bit behind the fair."

      "Nobody would blame her for changing her mind yet now you've offered yourself," declared Susan.

      "She's no wish to change. She likes me very well as a friend--always have since she used to blow my nose for me in infant school--but she likes him a long sight better--well enough to wed."

      "She'll change yet--mark me," foretold his aunt.

      "My son have got his self-respect, I believe, Susan, and, change or not change, he'll never give her another chance, I should hope. 'Tis done, and to her dying day she'll rue it--as she well deserves. To put that rough rabbit-catcher afore--however, I thank God she did--I thank God she did; and I shall thank Him in person on my knees this night. Never, never was such an empty giglet wench heard of. A merciful escape without a doubt; for a fool only breeds fools."

      "I may be her brother-in-law if I can't be her husband," said Bartley; and then he departed and left the indignant and wounded old women to wonder what he might mean.

      CHAPTER IX

      THE DOGS OF WAR

      The renowned Mr. Fogo, with the modesty of a man really great, arrived at Sheepstor in a butcher's trap from Plymouth. He brought a box of humble dimensions, studded with brass nails; while for the rest, a very large umbrella, two walking-sticks and a cape of London pattern completed his outfit.

      Reuben Shillabeer walked as far as Sheep's Tor Bridge, and the two notable men met there and shook hands before numerous admiring spectators. Then the sporting butcher, who had driven Mr. Fogo from Plymouth, proceeded to Reuben's familiar inn, while 'Frosty-face' and the 'Dumpling' made triumphal entry into the village together. The contrast between them could scarcely have been more abrupt. Shillabeer ambled with immense strides and heaving shoulders, like a bear on its hind legs, and his great, gentle face, set in its tawny fringe of hair, smiled out upon the world with unusual animation as he shortened his gait, crooked his knees somewhat and gave his arm to his friend. The notable Fogo was a good foot shorter than Reuben--a thin, brisk, clean-shaved man with eyes like a hawk, under very heavy brows, now quite white. His nose was sharp and thin; his mouth, a slit; his hair was still thick and white as snow. Fogo numbered seventy years, yet bore himself as straight and brisk as a youth. He was agile, thin and wiry; but a certain asperity of countenance, which had won him his nickname in the past, was now smoothed away by the modelling of time, and Mr. Fogo's face, though keen, might be called amiable; though exceedingly wide-awake, revealed no acerbity of expression. His glance took in the situation swiftly.

      "Crikey!" he said. "And you live here among all these trees and mountains and rocks! But I daresay, now, there's pretty fishing in this river."

      "Trout--nought else. And 'tisn't the season for 'em. But a fisherman still, I see--eh? What a man! Not a day older, I warrant. And how did they serve you at Plymouth?"

      "I've no fault to find with Plymouth," said Mr. Fogo. "They done me a treat there, and we had a pretty sporting house and a nice set-to in the new way with the mufflers. I got my boy through, but he'd have lost if I hadn't been there. And now let me cast my eye over you, 'Dumpling.' The same man; but gone in the hams, I see. You big 'uns--'tis always that way. Your frames can't carry the load of fat. And so your lady has passed away to a better land. But that's old history."

      "No, it isn't, Fogo," declared Mr. Shillabeer, his animation perishing. "'Twill never be old history so long as I bide in the vale; and I hope you'll have a good tell about her many a time afore you leave me. But not to-day. We'll talk about her in private--you and me--over a drop of something special."

      "'Twas the weather killed her, I doubt," hazarded Mr. Fogo. "You couldn't expect a London woman to stand so much fresh air as you've got down here. Why--Good Lord!--you breathe nought with a smell to it from year to year! There's not a homely whiff of liquor or fried fish strikes the nose--not so much as the pleasant odour of brewing, or them smells that touch the beak Covent Garden way. Nought for miles and miles--unless it's pigs; and that I don't like, and never shall."

      "Our air will make you terrible hungry, however," promised Mr. Shillabeer; "and by the same token we'd better get on our way, for there's a goose with apple sauce and some pretty stuffing to welcome you."

      That evening a very large gathering assembled in the public bar of 'The Corner House,' and the men of Standing were introduced each in turn to Mr. Fogo. He had changed his attire and produced from the box of many nails a rusty brown coat, a shirt with a frill and black knee-breeches. Thus attired, he suggested some pettifogging attorney from the beginning of the century. He sat by the fire, smoked a clay and conducted himself with the utmost affability. He was, in fact, no greater than common men while ordinary subjects were under discussion. Only when the Prize Ring began to be talked about, did the aquiline and historic Fogo soar to his true altitudes and silence all listeners before the torrent of his discourse.

      The visitor drank gin and not much of that. He was somewhat silent at first until Reuben explained his many-sided greatness; then, when the company a little realised the man they had among them, he began to talk.

      "The Fancy always felt you was unlike the rest," said Shillabeer. "Even the papers took you serious. There was pugs and there was mugs; there was good sportsmen and bad ones, and there were plenty of all sorts else, but never more than one 'Frosty-face.'"

      Mr. Fogo nodded.

      "I can't deny it," he said. "'Twas my all-roundness, I believe. Fight I couldn't--not being built on the pattern of a fighting man, though the heart was in me; but I had a slice over my share of wits, and I'd forgot more about the P.R. than most people ever knew before I was half a century old."

      "You must understand," said Shillabeer to his guests, "that Fogo always had letters stuck after his name, for all the world like other learned men. They was complimentary and given to him by the sporting Press of the kingdom."

      "Quite true," said Fogo. "I was D.C.G., which stood for Deputy Commissary-General--the great Tom Oliver of course being C.-G. We had the handling of the stakes and ropes of the P.R. from the time that Oliver fought his last serious fight in 1821. He's a fruiterer and greengrocer now in Chelsea, and a year or two older than me."

      "Then you was--what was it--P.L.P.R.--eh?" asked the 'Dumpling.'

      "I was and still am," returned 'Frosty-face,' proudly. "P.L.P.R.--that's 'Poet Laureet of the Prize Ring.' And it may interest these gentlemen here assembled to know that many and many a time my poems about the great fights was printed in the sporting papers afore most of those present was born or thought of."

      "I hope you've brought some along with you," said Reuben.

      "Certainly I have--a sheaf of 'em. I never travel without them," returned the Londoner. "And when by good chance I find myself in a bar full of sportsmen of the real old sort, like to-night, I always say to myself, 'not a man here but shall have a chance of buying one of the poems on the great fights, written by old 'Frosty-faced Fogo.'"

      "And you never fought yourself, Mr. Fogo?" asked David Bowden, who was of the company.

      "Never in a serious way," answered the veteran. "There wasn't enough of me."

      "I can mind when you come very near a mill though," declared Shillabeer. "'Twas after

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