"I'll git even. I'll send a traveller into that preserve who'll put him off it." He spoke with a sinister suggestion.
"Huh!" the Emperor grunted. He understood the threat of the other, who clearly meant to set the woods afire.
"Ain't I right? What d' ye come to, anyway, when ye think it all over?" The words came hot and fast off the tongue of the com-plainer.
"F-fool," Strong stammered, calmly. There was something in his way of saying it that made the others laugh.
A faint smile of embarrassment showed in the face of the angry woodsman.
"Me or the millionaire?" he inquired.
"B-both," Strong answered, soberly, as the storm ended in a little gust of laughter.
Strong had stripped the guide of his anger as deftly as a squirrel could take the shell off a nut. In the brief silence that followed he thought of another maxim for his memorandum-book, and soon it was recorded therein as follows:
"Man that makes trouble sure to have most of it."
Presently he who sat on the cracker-barrel remarked, "If them air woods git afire now, they'll burn the stars out o' heaven."