He had a steady, blue eye and a dissipated, iron-gray
mustache. This personage was Mr. Ephraim Watts, who, following a calling
more fashionable in the eighteenth century than in the latter decades of
the nineteenth, had shaken the dust of Carlow from his feet some three
years previously, at the strong request of the authorities. The "Herald"
had been particularly insistent upon his deportation, and, in the local
phrase, Harkless had "run him out of town." Perhaps it was because the
"Herald's" opposition (as the editor explained at the time) had been
merely moral and impersonal, and the editor had always confessed to a
liking for the unprofessional qualities of Mr. Watts, that there was but
slight embarrassment when the two gentlemen met to-day. His breakfast
finished, Harkless went over to the other and extended his hand. Cynthia
held her breath and clutched the back of a chair. However, Mr. Watts made
no motion toward his well-known hip pocket. Instead, he rose, flushed
slightly, and accepted the hand offered him.
"I'm glad to see you, Mr. Watts," said the journalist, cordially. "Also,
if you are running with the circus and calculate on doing business here
to-day, I'll have to see that you are fired out of town before noon. How
are you? You're looking extremely well."
"Mr. Harkless," answered Watts, "I cherish no hard feelings, and I never
said but what you done exactly right when I left, three years ago.
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