Even at that distance Farr’s keen gaze detected the filmy eyes and the flushed face.

“Perhaps it’s because the Corn-Growers propose to put their corn into johnny-bread instead of using it for whisky?”

The newspaper man, his suspicions dulled by Farr’s radiant good nature and wholesome frankness, went away about his business, but he halted long enough beside Dodd’s chair to repeat “the corn-grower’s” joke regarding the young man who had been glowering on him.

Dodd got up with as much alacrity as he could command and went across to Farr.  Sober, the nephew of Colonel Dodd had treated this person with rather lofty contempt; drunk, he was not so finical in matters of caste—­and, besides, this man now wore the garb of a gentleman, and young Mr. Dodd always placed much emphasis on clothes.

“Look here, my fellow, now that I have you where I don’t need to consider the presence of ladies, I want to ask you how you dared to mess into my private business?”

Farr, towering above him, beamed down on him with tolerant indifference and did not answer.

“That Lochinvar business may sound good in a poem, but it doesn’t go here in Marion—­not when it’s my business and my girl.”

Dodd raised his voice.  He seemed about to become a bit hysterical.

Farr set slow, gripping, commanding clutch about the young man’s elbow.

“If your business with me can possibly be any talk about a lady,” he advised, “you’d better come along into the reading-room.”

“It is about a lady,” persisted Dodd when they had swung in behind a newspaper-rack.  The room was apparently empty.  “You understand what you came butting in upon, don’t you?”

“I took it to be a rehearsal of a melodrama, crudely conceived and very poorly played.”

“Say, you use pretty big words for a low-lived iceman.”

“State your business with me if you have any,” Farr reminded him.  “I have something else to do besides swap talk with a drunken man—­and your breath is very offensive.”

Dodd began to tap a finger on Farr’s breast.

“I want you to understand that I’ve got a full line on you; you have been chumming with a Canuck rack-tender, you deserted a woman, and she committed suicide, and you took the brat—­”

Farr’s big hand released the elbow and set itself around Mr. Dodd’s neck.  Thumb and forefinger bored under the jaw and Mr. Dodd’s epiglottis ceased vibrating.

“I don’t like to assault a man, but talk doesn’t seem to fit your case and I can’t stop long enough to talk, anyway.  This choking is my comment on your lies.”  He pushed Mr. Dodd relentlessly down into the nearest chair and spanked his face slowly and deliberately with the flat of his hand.  “And this will indicate to you just how much I care for your threats.  You’ll remember it longer than you will recollect words.”

He finished and went away, leaving his victim getting his breath in the chair.  Dodd, peering under the rack, saw him hasten and join the Honorable Archer Converse in the hotel lobby and they went up the broad stairs together.