The Migleys—father and son—of Migleyville, hastened to greet the "Emperor of the Woods."
They were the heralds of the great king of which Strong had complained that night he laid his heart bare and whose name was Business—a king who ruled not with the sword, but with flattery and temptation and artful devices. The Emperor knew that they were the men who had bought his stronghold; that they were come to shove the frontier of their king far beyond the Lost River country; that axes and saws and dams and flooded flats and whirling wheels and naked hill-sides would soon follow them.
"How are you, Mr. Strong?" said the elder Migley, who, by his son, was familiarly called "Pop." He overflowed with geniality. "Glad to see you. Hot an' dry out in the clearing. Little track-worn. Thought we'd come in here for a breath o' fresh air an' a week or two o' sport. Have a drink?"
He winked one eye in a significant manner, which seemed to say that he had plenty and was out for a good time.
"N-no th-thanks," said Strong, as he surveyed the stout figure of the elder Migley.
Here was one of the royal family of Business, in dress neatly symbolic, for Mr. Migley wore a light suit of clothes divided into checks of considerable magnitude by stripes that ran, as it were, north, south, east, and west. The broad convexity of his front resembled, in some degree, an atlas globe. One might have located any part of his system by degrees of latitude and longitude. His equator was represented by a large golden chain which curved in a great arc from one pocket of his waistcoat to the other. As he walked one might have imagined that he was moving in his orbit. His large, full face was adorned with a chin-whisker and a selfish and prosperous-looking nose. It had got possession of nearly all the color in his countenance, and occupied more than its share of space. The son, "Tom," had older manners and a more severe face. He carried with him a look of world-weariness and a sense of all-embracing knowledge so frequently derived from youthful experience. He was the-only-son type of domestic tyrant—overfed, selfish, brutal, wearied by adulation, crowned with curly hair.
"Look at that boy," the elder Migley whispered, pointing at the fat young man of twenty-three who sat on a door-sill cleaning his rifle. "Ain't he a picture? Got a fast mark in Hash-ford Seminary." Mr. Migley owned a number of trotting-horses, and his conversation was always flavored with the cant of the stable.
Strong looked sadly at the fat young man, who was, indeed, the very personification of pulp, and thought of the doom of the woods.
The elder Migley, as if able to read the mind of Strong, offered him the consolation of a cigar. Then he reached to the pegs above him and lowered a quaking whip of greenheart which he had put together soon after his arrival.
"Heft it," he whispered, pressing his rod upon the Emperor. "Ain't that a dandy?"