“Well, sah, Colonel, it’s—­it’s sorter—­moist, Colonel!”

“Um!  Well, it’ll be better by to-morrow, I expect, when we go fishing.  And be careful of my rods when you take the grips off.  If you so much as scratch the tip of even my oldest one, I—­I’ll—­well, you know what I’ll do to you, Shag!”

“Yes, sah, I knows, Colonel!”

“Very well.  Give that boy a dollar.  Maybe he never read Walton, and that’s why he’s so ignorant.”

Colonel Ashley settled back in his chair, and, with unfurrowed brow, read on: 

“. . . you shall see or hear him leap at flies, then if you get a grasshopper, put it on your hook with your line about two yards long, standing behind a bush or tree where his hole is—­”

Once more the colonel was happy.

Shag sought out the discomfited newsboy, and, chuckling as had his master, handed the lad a dollar.

“Say, what’s this for?” questioned the lad, in astonishment.

“Colonel done say to give it to you fo’ hurtin’ yo’ feelin’s.”

“He did!  Great!  Say, does he want a book—­a, paper?  Say, I got a swell detective story—­”

The boy started out of the compartment.

“Oh, mah good Lord!  Fo’ th’ love of honey cakes, don’t!” gasped Shag, grabbing him just in time.  “Does yo’ know who the colonel is?”

“No, but he’s mighty white if he wants to buy a dollar’s worth of books and papers.  I haven’t sold much on this trip, but if he—­”

“But he don’t want to, boy!  Don’t you understan’?  Jes’ listen to me right now!  De colonel don’t want nothin’ but Walton an’ his angle worms!”

“Who’s Walton?  What road’s he travel on?”

“He don’t travel.  He’s daid, I reckon.  But he done writ a book on fishin’ poles, an’ dat’s all the colonel reads when he ain’t workin’ much.  It’s a book ’bout angle worms as neah as I kin make out.”

“You mean Izaak Walton’s Complete Angler, I guess,” said a man, who passed by just then on his way to the smoking compartment, and he smiled genially at Shag.

“Dat’s it, yes, sah!  I knowed it had suffin t’ do wif angle worms.  Well, boy, dat book’s all de colonel ever reads when he’s vacationin’, an’ dat’s whut he’s doin’ now—­jest vacationin’.

“When we start away dis mawnin’ he say to me, the colonel did:  ’Now, Shag, I don’t want t’ be boddered wif nuffin’.  I don’t want t’ read no papers.  I don’t want t’ heah ‘bout no battles, murder an’ sudden deaths.  I jest wants peace an’ quiet an’ fish!’ He done come up heah t’ go fishin’ laik he go t’ lots other places, though he ain’t been heah fo’ good many years.  An’ boy, he specially tell me not t’ let him be boddered wif book agents.”

“I ain’t a book agent,” objected the train-boy.

“I knows you ain’t,” admitted Shag.  “I knows yo’ ain’t, but yo’ sells books, an’ dat’s whut’s de trouble.  Whut kind of a book did yo’ offer de colonel jest now?”