"And he laughs and says, 'All right, I'll sacrifice after this, but you
and me must see Niagara.' And she was sot and he was sotter, and at last
they quarreled. He marches out of the door and says: 'Very good. When
you're ready to be sensible and change your mind, you can come to me.
And says Olive, pretty white but firm: 'No, Solomon, I'm right and
you're not. I'm afraid this time the mountain must come to Mahomet.'
That ended it. He went away and never come back, and after a long spell
she give in to her dad and married Bill Edwards. Foolish? 'Well, now,
WA'N'T it!"

"Humph!" grunted Crocker. "She must have been a born gump to let a smart
man like him get away just for that."

"There's a good many born gumps not so far from here as her house,"
interjected Phinney. "You remember that next time you look in the glass,
Ed Crocker. And--and--well, there's no better friend of Sol Berry's on
earth than I am, but, so fur as their quarrel was concerned, if you ask
me I'd have to say Olive was pretty nigh right."

"Maybe--maybe," declared the allwise Cornelius, "but just the same if I
was Sol Berry, and knew my old girl was likely to go to the poorhouse,
I'll bet my conscience--"

"S-ssh!" hissed Crocker, frantically. Cornelius stopped in the middle
of his sentence, whirled in his chair, and looked up. Behind him in the
doorway of the station stood Captain Sol himself. The blue cap he always
wore was set back on his head, a cigar tipped upward from the corner
of his mouth, and there was a grim look in his eye and about the smooth
shaven lips above the short, grayish-brown beard.