class="first">An hour afterwards, Travis heard a well-known walk in the hall and opened the door.

He stepped back astonished. He released the knob and gazed half angry, half smiling.

A large dog, brindled and lean, walked complacently and condescendingly in, followed by his master. At a glance, the least imaginative could see that Jud Carpenter, the Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills, and Bonaparte, his dog, were well mated.

The man was large, raw-boned and brindled, and he, also, walked in, complacently and condescendingly.

The dog's ears had been cropped to match his tail, which in his infancy had been reduced to a very few inches. His under jaw protruded slightly—showing the trace of bull in his make-up.

That was the man all over. Besides he had a small, mean, roguish ear.

The dog was cross-eyed—“the only cross-eyed purp in the worl'”—as his master had often proudly proclaimed, and the expression of his face was uncanny.

Jud Carpenter's eastern-eye looked west, and his western-eye looked east, and the rest of the paragraph above fitted him also.

The dog's pedigree, as his master had drawlingly proclaimed, was “p'yart houn', p'yart bull, p'yart cur, p'yart terrier, an' the rest of him—wal, jes' dog.”

Reverse this and it will be Carpenter's: Just dog, with a sprinkling of bull, cur, terrier, and hound.

Before Richard Travis could protest, the dog walked deliberately to the fireplace and sprang savagely on the helpless old setter dreaming on the rug. The older dog expostulated with terrific howls, while Travis turned quickly and kicked off the intruder.

He stood the kicking as quietly as if it were part of the programme in the last act of a melodrama in which he was the villain. He was kicked entirely across the room and his head was driven violently into the half-open door of the side-board. Here it came in contact with one of Cook-mother's freshly baked hams, set aside for the morrow's lunch. Without even a change of countenance—for, in truth, it could not change—without the lifting even of a hair in surprise, the brute seized the ham and settled right where he was, to lunch. And he did it as complacently as he had walked in, and with a satisfied growl which seemed to say that, so far as the villain was concerned, the last act of the melodrama was ending to his entire satisfaction.

Opening a side door, Travis seized him by the stump of a tail and one hind leg—knowing his mouth was too full of ham to bite anything—and threw him, still clutching the ham, bodily into the back yard. Without changing the attitude he found himself in when he hit the ground, the brindled dog went on with his luncheon.

The very cheek of it set Travis to laughing. He closed the door and said to the man who had followed the dog in: “Carpenter, if I had the nerve of that raw-boned fiend that follows you around, I'd soon own the world.”

The man had already taken his seat by the fire as unaffectedly as had the dog. He had entered as boldly and as indifferently and his two deep-set, cat-gray cross-eyes looked around as savagely.

He was a tall, lank fellow, past middle age, with a crop of stiff, red-brown hair, beginning midway of his forehead, so near to an equally shaggy and heavy splotch of eyebrows as to leave scarce a finger's breadth between them.

He was wiry and shrewd-looking, and his two deep-set eyes seemed always like a leopard's,—walking the cage of his face, hunting for some crack to slip through. Furtive, sly, darting, rolling hither and thither, never still, comprehensive, all-seeing, malicious and deadly shrewd. These were the eyes of Jud Carpenter, and they told it all. To this, add again that they looked in contrary directions.

As a man's eye, so is the tenor of his life.

Yet in them, now and then, the twinkle of humor shone. He had a conciliatory way with those beneath him, and he considered all the mill hands in that class. To his superiors he was a frowning, yet daring and even presumptuous underling.

Somewhat better dressed than the Hillites from whom he sprang was this Whipper-in of the Acme Cotton Mills—somewhat better dressed, and with the air of one who had arisen above his surroundings. Yet, withal, the common, low-born, malicious instinct was there—the instinct which makes one of them hate the man who is better educated, better dressed than he. All told, it might be summed up and said of Jud Carpenter that he had all the instincts of a Hillite and all the arrogance of a manager.

“Nobody understands that dog, Bonaparte, but me,” said Carpenter after a while—“he's to dogs what his namesake was to man. He's the champ'un fighter of the Tennessee Valley, an' the only cross-eyed purp in the worl', as I have often said. Like all gen'uses of course, he's a leetle peculiar—but him and me—we understan's each other.”

He pulled out some mill papers and was about to proceed to discuss his business when Travis interrupted:

“Hold on,” he said, good humoredly, “after my experience with that cross-eyed genius of a dog, I'll need something to brace me up.”

He handed Carpenter a glass and each drank off his cocktail at a quaff.

Travis settled quickly to business. He took out his mill books, and for an hour the two talked in a low tone and mechanically. The commissary department of the mill was taken up and the entire accounts gone over. Memoranda were made of goods to be ordered. The accounts of families were run over and inspected. It was tedious work, but Travis never flagged and his executive ability was quick and incisive. At last he closed the book with an impatient gesture:

“That's all I'll do to-night,” he muttered decisively. “I've other things to talk to you about. But we'll need something first.”

He went to the side-board and brought out a decanter of whiskey, two goblets and a bowl of loaf sugar.

He laughed: “Mammy knows nothing about this. Two cocktails are the limit she sets for me, and so I keep this private bottle.”

He made a long-toddy for himself, but Carpenter took his straight. In all of it, his furtive eyes, shining out of the splotch of eyebrows above, glanced inquiringly around and obsequiously followed every movement of his superior.

“Now, Carpenter,” said the Secretary after he had settled back in his chair and lit a cigar, handing the box afterwards to the other—“You know me—you and I—must understand each other in all things.”

“'Bleeged to be that way,” drawled the Whipper-in—“we must wu'ck together. You know me, an' that Jud Carpenter's motto is, 'mum, an' keep movin'.' That's me—that's Jud Carpenter.”

Travis laughed: “O, it's nothing that requires so much heavy villain work as the tone of your voice would suggest. We're not in a melodrama. This is the nineteenth century and we're talking business and going to win a thing or two by common sense and business ways, eh?”

Carpenter nodded.

“Well, now, the first is quite matter of fact—just horses. I believe we are going to have the biggest fair this fall we have ever had.”

“It's lots talked about,” said Carpenter—“'specially the big race an' purse you've got put up.”

Travis grew interested quickly and leaned over excitedly.

“My reputation is at stake—and that of The Gaffs' stable. You see, Carpenter, it's a three-cornered race for three-thousand dollars—each of us, Col. Troup, Flecker and me, have put up a thousand—three heats out of five—the winner takes the stake. Col. Troup, of Lenox, has entered a fast mare of his, and Flecker, of Tennessee, will be there with his gelding. I know Flecker's horse. I could