"AT THE SOUND OF THE MAN'S VOICE, HENRY BURNS AND JACK HARVEY HAD SPRUNG UP IN AMAZEMENT."
"Colonel Witham!" they exclaimed, in the same breath.
"What are you two doing here?" he cried.
"What new monkey-shine of yours is this? Don't you know I won't have any Henry Burnses and Jack Harveys, nor any of the rest of you, around my hotel? Didn't yer get satisfaction enough out of bringing bad luck to me in one place, and now you come bringing it here? Get out, is what I say to you, and get out quick!"
"You keep away, gran'," he cried to the woman, who had stepped forward. "Don't you go interfering. It's my hotel; and I wouldn't care if 'twas raining a bucket a drop and coming forty times as hard. I'd put 'em out er doors, neck and crop. Get out, I say, and don't ever step a foot around here again."
Henry Burns and Jack Harvey stood for a moment, gazing in perplexity at each other.
"Shall we go, or stick it out?" asked Harvey, in a low voice.
"Why, it's a public house, and I don't believe he has a right to throw us out this way," said Henry Burns. "But it means a fight, sure, if we try to stay. I guess we better quit. It's his own place, and he's a rough man when he's angered."
Ruefully pulling on their sweaters—at least dry once more—and taking their paddles, which they had brought with them, from behind the door, they went out into the night, into the driving rain.