“I don't know as Mel had much of a belief in a hereafter; certainly he wasn't a great churchgoer. 'Well,' he says, mighty slow, but hearty and smiling, too, 'if I see father, I—guess—I'll—be—pretty— well—fixed!' Then he jest lay still, tryin' to quiet her and pettin' her head. And so—that's the way he went.”
Fiderson made one of his impatient little gestures, but Mr. Martin drowned his first words with a loud fit of coughing.
“Well, sir,” he observed, “I read that 'Leg-long' book down home; and I heard two or three countries, and especially ourn, had gone middling crazy over it; it seemed kind of funny that we should, too, so I thought I better come up and see it for myself, how it was, on the stage, where you could look at it; and—I expect they done it as well as they could. But when that little boy, that'd always had his board and clothes and education free, saw that he'd jest about talked himself to death, and called for the press notices about his christening to be read to him to soothe his last spasms—why, I wasn't overly put in mind of Melville Bickner.”
Mr. Martin's train left for Plattsville at two in the morning. Little Fiderson and I escorted him to the station. As the old fellow waved us good-bye from within the gates, Fiderson turned and said:
“Just the type of sodden-headed old pioneer that you couldn't hope to make understand a beautiful thing like 'L'Aiglon' in a thousand years. I thought it better not to try, didn't you?”