showing up in fair shape and plumb eager for the comfort of his guest.  It was Alonzo’s notion that the guest would of course want to sleep out in the front yard on the breast of old earth where he could look up at the pretty stars and feel at home, and he was getting out a roll of blankets when the guest said he didn’t want to make the least bit of trouble and for one night he’d manage to sleep inside four stifling walls in a regular bed, like common people do.  So Lon bedded him down in the guest chamber, but opened up the four windows in it and propped the door wide open so the poor fellow could have a breeze and not smother.  He told this downtown the next morning, and he was beginning to look right puzzled indeed.  He said the wayward child of Nature had got up after about half an hour and shut all the windows and the door.  Lon thought first he was intending to commit suicide, but he didn’t like to interfere.  He was telling Jeff Tuttle and me about it when we happened to pass his office.

“‘And there’s another funny thing,’” he says.  ’This chap was telling us all the way up home last night that he never ate meat—­simply fruits and nuts with a mug of spring water.  He said eating the carcasses of murdered beasts was abhorrent to him.  But when we got down to the table he consented to partake of the roast beef and he did so repeatedly.  We usually have cold meat for lunch the day after a rib roast, but there will be something else to-day; and along with the meat he drank two bottles of beer, though with mutterings of disgust.  He said spring water in the hills was pure, but that water out of pipes was full of typhoid germs.  He admitted that there were times when the grosser appetites assailed him.  And they assailed him this morning, too.  He said he might bring himself to eat some chops, and he did it without scarcely a struggle.  He ate six.  He said living the nauseous artificial life even for one night brought back the hateful meat craving.  I don’t know.  He is undeniably peculiar.  And of course you’ve heard about Pettikin’s affair for this evening?’

“We had.  Just before leaving the house I had received Henrietta’s card inviting me to the country club that evening ’to meet Mr. Wilfred Lennox, Poet and Nature Lover, who will recite his original verses and give a brief talk on “The World’s Debt to Poetry."’ And there you have the whole trouble.  Henrietta should have known better.  But I’ve let out what women really are.  I told Alonzo I would sure be among those present, I said it sounded good.  And then Alonzo pipes up about Ben Sutton coming to town on the eleven forty-two from the West.  Ben makes a trip out of Alaska every summer and never fails to stop off a day or two with Lon, they having been partners up North in ’98.