The professor made a deposit, and proceeded:
“Have you noticed that our host is a very tall man? Like most men of his height, he hates to bend over. If the stove were near the floor, he would have to stoop down low when he whirled a flap-jack or speared a rasher of bacon. Now he can stand up and do it with ease. Your draught theory is no good; the longer the pipe, if it is straight, the better the fire will burn.”
“Professor,” remarked the colonel, “I regret to have to tell you that your money is gone. Long Tom told me, on the way up, that his partner did all the cooking, and he is a man of rather short stature.” The colonel then paid his compliments to the jack-pot, and continued: “Now, my idea is that the stove heats the room better there than on the floor. It is only a cooking-stove, to be sure, but when the winter is cold it makes this room comfortable. Being up in the middle of the space, it heats it all equally well, which it could not do if it were down below.”
The doctor greeted this theory with a loud laugh. “Colonel,” he said, “you are wild—way off the mark. Hot air rises, of course, and the only way to disseminate it is to have your stove as low as possible. According to your idea, it would be a good plan to put the furnace in the attic of a house instead of in the basement.”
“I think,” said the colonel, “that I could appreciate your argument better if you would ante.”
“The pot is mine,” said the doctor, as he deposited his coin; “you will all adopt my idea the moment you hear it, and Long Tom, who will be here in a minute, will bear me out. This room is very small; it has but little floor-space, and none of it goes to waste. Now, if he had put the stove down where we expected to find it, Long Tom could not have made use of the area underneath, as you see he has done. On all sides of the supporting posts, you will notice there are hooks, on which he hangs his pans and skillets. Underneath, there is a kitchen-closet for pots and cooking-utensils of various sorts. What could be more convenient? Under your ordinary stove there is room only for a poker and a few cockroaches.”
The judge, who had been listening to the opinions offered by the others with the same grim smile that occasionally ornamented his face when he announced that an objection was overruled, now stepped forward and dropped a coin on the table. He then rendered his decision as follows:
“It appears that none of you have noticed the forest of hooks in the roof just over the stove. They are not in use at present, but they are there for some purpose. I imagine that during the winter huge pieces of venison and bear’s-meat dangle over the stove, and are dried for use later. Now, if the stove were on the floor, it would be too far from the roof to be of service in this way.”
“Here comes old Tom,” shouted the colonel, who had stepped to the open door while the judge was speaking.
The old trapper put down the various articles of baggage with which his arms were loaded and came into the kitchen-cabin where we all stood. He glanced at the group and then at the stilted stove in our midst.