cleans out the stables.  Never saw a man wash his hands so much in my life, but accordin’ to his lights he’s a mighty good worker.  He eats a lot, but then all hired men eats a lot.  An’ he reads!  Brought a big trunk with him, an’ in it was a lot of books in French, Dutch or some other language that no white man can understand.  And fight!  You know Big Dave Cole, that’s been with me for years?”

I assured him that I should never forget “Big Dave” Cole.  I have known him ever since he went to work for Bishop, and that was when I was a boy.  From that day he has been the terror of the neighbourhood, and I have sometimes thought that even Bishop stood in fear of him.

“Wal,” he said slowly and impressively, biting the end from a plug of tobacco, “this here Wallace licked the life plumb out of Big Dave no more than yesterday, an’ Big Dave is that disgusted he has packed up and quit me.”

“What caused the trouble?” I asked.

“Big Dave called him an English dude, an’ it seems that Wallace took offense because he’s Scotch,” explained Bishop, “at least that’s what the other men who was there when it started said.  I couldn’t get a word outer Wallace, who said he’d quit if I wanted him to, but I told him that a man who could lick Big Dave and come out without a scratch had the makings of a rattlin’ good hired man, an’ I raised his wages two dollars a month an’ gave him Big Dave’s room, which is bigger than the one he had.  If he could milk, an’ run a seeder, or a thresher, or stack oats an’ corn as well as he can fight, I would give him forty dollars a month.”

This incident was related to me several weeks ago, and I have made it a point to study this chap when I have met him.  I should say he is about my age, twenty-five or so, and I must say that he is a good-looking fellow.  He is tall, dark of complexion, broad of shoulder and narrow of loin, and certainly looks as if he was able to take care of himself.  I presume that he is some college chap who cannot make his way in the profession he has chosen, and who is trying to get a financial start by working on a farm.

I am going to have a talk with him at the first opportunity, and if my suspicion is verified I shall try to find some way to give him a quicker start.  I doubt if Bishop is paying him more than twenty dollars a month.

As I started to describe, LaHume, Miss Olive Lawrence and I were playing a threesome.  It was along about noon when we came to the tenth tee, which is located so that a sliced ball may go into or over the country road which separates the Bishop farm from the golf course.  Miss Lawrence is not an accurate player, but she drives as long a ball as any woman golfer in Woodvale.

She hit the ball hard, but sliced it, and a strong westerly wind helped deflect it to the right.  It sailed over the fence, and struck in a ploughed field only a few feet from a man whom I recognised as Wallace.