"Well, if ya can't move it, why in Dothan dontcha kick it out?" retorted Conk coldly.
"All right, I will," said the guest, returning to the furnace above.
And he did. Glass, frame, and sash were kicked with all the power of an angry man into a mass of wreckage never again to be redeemed.
"Well," said the guest the following morning, as he started to leave for the station, "what's the tax? What do I owe you?"
"Not a blamed cent!" gruffed Conk. "You're the first son of a sea cook that's ever had the nerve to call my bluff, and by Henry you don't pay a nickel into my till except over my dead body!"
If I have seemed in any wise severe in my treatment of Conk in this tribute to his memory, I am sorry. The material facts could hardly be glossed over; but as for the man himself I am truly glad to have met him. I wouldn't have missed him for a farm. He was not much of a Chesterfield; but he had his own ways, and they gave me a thrill. The joyous, almost grateful courtesy with which he put me out of his front door was a thing to remember, and I in turn am everlastingly grateful to him for letting me out on the ground floor instead of seizing me by the left leg and dragging me up through the skylight, and throwing me off the roof. He could have done it easily, and I am sure it was only the intrinsic, if considerably latent, nobility of his soul that restrained the impulse to do so that I am confident he felt.