"What did I tell you, gentlemen? Just as I expected, the semi-nuisance has arrived. Give him room! The great landscape painter is about to explode with another tale of his youth. You took the measure of a man once, I think you said, Mac; was it for a suit of clothes or a coffin? No, don't answer; keep right on."
"Yes, I did take his measure," said Mac, in a low, earnest tone, ignoring Boggs's aside; "and I've never taken any stock in him since. I don't think any of you know him, and it's just as well that you don't. I may be a little Quixotic about these things—guess I am—but I'm going to stay so. I met this Quarterman—that's more than he deserves; he's nearer one-eighth of a man than a quarter—up at the club-house on Salt Beach. I was a guest; he was a member. Big, heavily built young fellow; weighed about two hundred pounds; rather good-looking; wore the best of English shooting togs; carried an English gun and carted around a lot of English leather cases, bound in brass, with his name plate on them. A regular out-and-out sport of the better type, I thought, when I first saw him. He had with him one of the most beautiful reddish-brown setters I ever laid my eyes on—what you'd get with burnt sienna and madder—with a coat as fine and silky as a camel's hair brush. One of those clean-mouthed, clean-toothed, agate-eyed, sweet-breathed dogs that every girl loves at first sight, and can no more help putting her hands on than she can help coddling a roly-poly kitten just out of a basket. He had the same well-bred manners that Chief has, the same grace of movement, same repose, only more gentle and more confiding. The only thing that struck me as peculiar about him was the way he watched his master; he seemed to love him and yet to be afraid of him; always ready to bound out of his way and yet equally ready to come when he was called—a manner which he never showed to anyone who tried to make friends with him.
"I saw Quarterman that morning when he started out alone quail shooting, the setter bounding before him, running up and springing at him, and off again—doing all the things a human dog does to tell a man how happy he is to go along, and what a lot of fun the two are going to have together. I watched them until they got clear of the marshes and disappeared in the woods on the way to the open country beyond. All that day the picture of the well-equipped, alert young fellow and the spring of the joyous setter kept coming to my mind. I don't believe in killing things, as you know (so I don't shoot), but I thought if I did I'd just like to have a dog like that one to show me how.
"About six o'clock that night the two returned. I was sitting by the wood fire—a good deal bigger than this one, the logs nearly six feet long—when the outer door was swung back and Quarterman came in, his boots covered with mud, his bird-bag over his shoulder. The setter followed close at his heels, his beautiful brown coat covered with burrs and dirt. Both man and dog had had a hard day's work and a poor one, judging from the bird-bag which hung almost flat against Quarterman's shoulder.
"Everybody pushed back his chair to make room for the tired-out sportsman.
"'What luck?' cried out half-a-dozen men at once.
"Quarterman, without answering, stopped in the middle of the room some distance from the fire, laid his gun on the table, reached around for his bird-bag, thrust in his hand, drew out a small quail—all he had shot—and threw it with all his might against the wall of the fireplace, where it dropped into the ashes—threw it as a boy would throw a brick against a fence. Then with a vicious hind thrust of his boot he kicked the setter in the face. The dog gave a cry of pain and crawled under the table and out of the room.
"'What luck!' growled Quarterman. 'Footed it fifteen miles clear to Pottsburg, and that damned dog scared up every bird before I could get a shot at it!' and without another word he mounted the stairs to his room.
"His opinion of the dog was now common property. If any man who had heard it disagreed with him, he kept his opinion to himself. But what I wanted to know was what the setter thought of Quarterman? He had followed him all day through swamps and briars; had run, jumped, crept on his belly, sniffed, scented, and nosed into every tuft of grass and brush-heap where a quail could hide itself; had walked miles to the man's one, leaped fences, scoured hills, raced down country roads and over ditches, had pointed and flushed a dozen birds the brute couldn't hit, and after doing his level best had come back to the club-house expecting to get a warm corner and a hot supper—his right as well as Quarterman's—and instead got a kick in the face.
"I ask you now, what did the dog think of him? I was so mad I had to go outside and let off steam myself. I was half Quarterman's weight and ten years his senior, but if he had stayed five minutes longer by that fire I am quite sure I should have told him what I thought of him."