"I didn't want to, and I must admit that it isn't.

Still, a good many of you quiet men are addicted to occasionally astonishing your friends, and I can't help a fancy that you could do that kind of thing as well as most folks, if it pleased you.

In fact, there was an artistic finish to the climax that suggested your usual thoroughness." "It did ?" said Winston grimly, remembering his recent visitor and one or two of Courthorne's Albertan escapades.

"Still, as I'm afraid I haven't the dramatic instinct, do you mind telling me how ?" Dane laughed.

"Well, it is probable there are other men who would have kissed the girl, but I don't know that it would have occurred to them to smash a decanter on the irate lover's head." Winston felt his fingers tingle for a grip on Courthorne's throat.
"And that's what I've been doing lately?
You, of course, concluded that after conducting myself in an examplary fashion an astonishing time it was a trifling lapse ?" "Well," said Dane dryly, "as I admitted, it appeared somewhat out of your usual line, but when I heard that a man from the settlement had been ejected with violence from your homestead, what could one believe ?" "Colonel Barrington told you that!" "No," said Dane, "you know he didn't.