"The Judge is a little on the sentimental order to-night," said Amos.
"Hold on, Colonel! hold on. You've got 'o jump. Hah! hah!" roared Gordon from the checker-board. "That's right, that's right!" he ended, as the Colonel complied reluctantly.
"Sock it to the old cuss!" commented Amos. "What I was going to say," he resumed, rolling down the collar of his coat, "was, that when my wife helped me bundle up t'-night, she said I was gitt'n' t' be an old granny. We are agin', Judge, the's no denyin' that. We're both gray as Norway rats now. An' speaking of us agin' reminds me,—have y' noticed how bald the old Kyernel's gitt'n'?"
"I have, Amos," answered the Judge, mournfully. "The old man's head is showing age, showing age! Getting thin up there, ain't it?"
The old Colonel bent to his work with studied abstraction, and even when Amos said, judicially, after long scrutiny: "Yes, he'll soon be as bald as a plate," he only lifted one yellow, freckled, bony hand, and brushed his carroty growth of hair across the spot under discussion. Gordon shook his fat paunch in silent laughter, nearly displacing the board.
"I was just telling Robie," pursued Brown, still retaining his reminiscent intonation, "that this storm takes the cake over anything"——
At this point Steve Roach and another fellow entered. Steve was Ridings' hired hand, a herculean fellow, with a drawl, and a liability for taking offense quite as remarkable.
"Say! gents, I'm no spring rooster, but this jest gits away with anything in line of cold I ever see."
While this communication was being received in ruminative silence, Steve was holding his ears in his hand and gazing at the intent champions at the board. There they sat; the old Squire panting and wheezing in his excitement, for he was planning a great "snap" on the Colonel, whose red and freckled nose almost touched the board. It was a solemn battle hour. The wind howled mournfully outside, the timbers of the store creaked in the cold, and the huge cannon stove roared in steady bass.
"Speaking about ears," said Steve, after a silence, "dummed if I'd like t' be quite s' bare 'round the ears as Kernel there. I wonder if any o' you fellers has noticed how the ol' feller's lost hair this last summer. He's gittin' bald, they's no coverin' it up—gittin' bald as a plate."