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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
with burnt-offerings. The head of each family was required to bring
a chicken. A heifer was killed and carefully cut up without breaking a
bone; and, while the smoke of sacrifice arose, feasting and dancing
began, and lasted until sunset. Firstlings of flocks and the first-fruits
of orchard and field were ordained the King's; and he also claimed
one-tenth of each man's possessions. The Mosaic law was set up in
Beaver Island, even to the stoning of rebellious children.
The smoke of a sacrificed people was now reeking on Beaver. This
singular man's French ancestry—for he was descended from Henri
de L'Estrange, who came to the New World with the Duke of York—
doubtless gave him the passion for picturesqueness and the spiritual
grasp on his isolated kingdom which keeps him still a notable and
unforgotten figure.
“It makes me feel bad to see so much destruction,” the young
man said to his wife; “though I offered to go with Billy Wentworth to
shoot Strang if nobody else was willing. I knew I was marked, and
sooner or later I would disappear if he continued to govern this
island. But with all his faults he was a man. He could fight; and
whip. He'd have sunk every steamer in the harbor to-day.”
“It's heavy on my heart, Ludlow—it's dreadful! Neighbors and
friends that we shall never see again!”
The young man caught his wife by the arm. They both heard the
swift beat of footsteps flying down the peninsula. Cecilia drew in her
breath and crowded against her husband. A figure came into view
and identified itself, leaping in bisected draperies across an open
space to the light-house door.
“Why, Rosanne!” exclaimed the keeper's wife. She continued to
say “Why, Rosanne! Why, Rosanne Baker!” after she had herself run
into the house and lighted a candle.
She set the candle on the chimney. It showed her rock-built
domicile, plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue
china on the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the
north wall. A corner staircase led to the second story of the tower,
and on its lowest step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and
panting. She was peculiarly dressed in the calico bloomers which the
King of Beaver had latterly decreed for the women of his kingdom.
Her trim legs and little feet, cased in strong shoes, appeared below
the baggy trousers. The upper part of her person, her almond eyes,
round curves and features were full of Oriental suggestions. Some
sweet inmate of a harem might so have materialized, bruising her
softness against the hard stair.
“Why, Rosanne Baker!” her hostess reiterated. Cecilia did not wear
bloomers. She stood erect in petticoats. “I thought you went on one
of the boats!”
“I didn't,” sobbed Rosanne. “When they were crowding us on I
slipped among the lumber piles and hid. I've been hid all day, lying
flat between boards—on top where they couldn't see me.”
“Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too! And you haven't
had anything to eat?”
“I don't want to eat. I'm only frightened to death at the wicked
Gentiles burning the island. I couldn't stay there all night, so I got
down and ran to your house.”
“Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne, where's your husband?”
The trembling creature stiffened herself and looked at Cecilia out
of the corners of her long eyes. “He's with Elizabeth Aiken.”
The only wife of one husband did not know how to take hold of
this subject.
“But your father was there,” she suggested. “How could you leave
your father and run the risk of never seeing him again?”
“I don't care if I never see him again. He said he was so
discouraged he didn't care what became of any of us.”
 Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic affection further,
but she saw that four step-mothers could easily be given up. She
turned helplessly to her husband who stood in the door.
“Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall we do?”
“Put her to bed.”
“Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you to-morrow?”
“There are two good guns on the rack over the chimney. I don't
think anybody will hurt me or her either, to-morrow.”
“Rosanne, my dear,” said Cecilia, trying to lift the relaxed soft body
and to open the stairway door behind her. “Come up with me right
off. I think you better be where people cannot look in at us.”
Rosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, clinging to her friend.
When they disappeared the young man heard her through the
stairway enclosure sobbing with convulsive gasps:
“I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would kill Elizabeth Aiken! I
hate her—I hate her!”
The light-house-keeper sat down again on his doorstep and faced
the prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to
him that his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the
situation with that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The
tabernacle began to burn lower, brands streaming away in the
current which a fire makes. It was strange to be more conscious of
inland doings than of that vast unsalted sea so near him, which
moistened his hair with vaporous drifts through the darkness. The
garnet redness of the temple shed a huger amphitheatre of shine
around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his lips. He was
considering that drunken fishermen might presently begin to rove,
and he would be wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his
candle, when by stealthy approaches around the light-house two
persons stood before him.
 “Is Ludlow here?” inquired a voice which he knew.
“I'm here, Jim! Are all the Mormons coming back?”
“Is Rosanne in your house?”
“Rosanne is here; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come inside, Jim. Have
you Elizabeth with you?”
“Yes, I have Elizabeth with me.”
The three entered together. Ludlow shut the door and dropped an
iron bar across it. The young men standing opposite were of nearly
the same age; but one was fearless and free and the other harassed
and haggard. Out-door labor and the skill of the fisheries had given
to both depth of chest and clean, muscular limbs. But James Baker
had the desperate and hunted look of a fugitive from justice. He was
fair, of the strong-featured, blue-eyed type that has pale chestnut-
colored hair clinging close to a well-domed head.
“Yes, Rosanne is here,” Ludlow repeated. “Now will you tell me
how you got here?”
“I rowed back in a boat.”
“Who let you have a boat?”
“There were sailors on the steamer. After I found Rosanne was left
behind I would have had a boat or killed the man that prevented
me. I had to wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your wife
would take care of her. I told myself that when I couldn't find any
chance to land in St. James's Bay until sunset.”
“She's been hiding in the lumber on the dock all day.”
“Did any one hurt her?”
“Evidently not.”
 The Mormon husband's face cleared with a convulsion which in
woman would have been a relieving burst of tears.
“Sit down, Elizabeth,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “You look fit to
fall.”
“Yes, sit down, Elizabeth,” James Baker repeated, turning to her
with secondary interest. But she remained standing, a tall Greek
figure in bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack was an
accident of which the eye took no account. She had pushed her soft
brown hair, dampened by the lake, behind her ears. They showed
delicately against the two shining masses. Her forehead and chin
were of noble and courageous shape. If there was fault, it was in the
breadth and height of brows masterful rather than feminine. She had
not one delicious sensuous charm to lure man. Her large eyes were
blotted with a hopeless blankness. She waited to see what would be
done next.
“Now I'll tell you,” said Baker to his friend, with decision, “I'm not
going to bring the howling Gentiles around you.”
“I don't care whether they come or not.”
“I know you don't. It isn't necessary in such a time as this for you
and me to look back.”
“I told you at the time I wouldn't forget it, Jim. You stood by me
when I married Cecilia in the teeth of the Mormons, and I'll stand by
you through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat's out yonder, and it's
yours as long as you want it; and we'll provision it.”
“That's what I was going to ask, Ludlow.”
“If I were you I'd put for Green Bay. Old neighbors are there, my
father among them.”
“That was my plan!”
 “But,” Ludlow added, turning his thumb over his shoulder with
embarrassment, “they're all Gentiles in Green Bay.”
“Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I told her the truth
before God. We've agreed to live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any
wife but Rosanne, and I don't want any wife but Rosanne now. You
don't know how it happened; I was first of the young men called on
to set an example. Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear
that it was impossible to resist. He might have threatened till
doomsday. But I don't know what he did with me. I told him it
wasn't treating Elizabeth fair. Still, I married her according to Saints'
law, and I consider myself bound by my pledge to provide for her.
She's a good girl. She has no one to look to but me. And I'm not
going to turn her off to shift for herself if the whole United States
musters against me.”
“Now you talk like a man. I think better of you than I have for a
couple of weeks past.”
“It ought to make me mad to be run off of Beaver. But I couldn't
take any interest. May I see Rosanne?”
“Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put her to bed. The walls
and floors are thick here or she would have heard your voice.”
“Poor little Rosanne! It's been a hard day for her.”
The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as
you can give me a few things to make the women comfortable for
the run to Green Bay, I'll take them and put out.”
“Tell Cecilia to come down. She'll know what they need.”
Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most
tenderly the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted
on a braided rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet
and remarked:
 “It's a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we're going to have
fair weather.”
“I think we are,” she answered.
Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped
Cecilia gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the
stores of a young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-
keeper trimmed the lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about
to call the two up-stairs when the crunching of many feet on gravel
was heard around his tower and a torch was thrust at one of the
windows.
At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway
and let James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the
room.
Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he
reached for his weapons.
“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said
to the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They'll kill
you, and they daren't touch me. Even if they had anything against
me, the drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a
government officer. I'm going to open this window.”
A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had
doubtless lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward
to force a way through the window.
“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of
his gun on the sill. “You're tramping down my wife's flowers.”
“It's your nosegays of Mormons we're after having, Ludlow. We
seen them shlipping in here!”
“It's shame to you, Ludlow, and your own dacent wife that hard to
come at, by raison of King Strang!”
 “Augh! thim bloomers!—they do be makin' me sthummick sick!”
“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay
the Mormons for fish barrels.”
The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us oat the divil
forninst there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”
“I haven't any devil in the house.”
“It's Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”
“Jim Baker is here. But he's leaving the island at once with the
women.”
“He'll not lave it alive.”
“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the torch-
bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in
to the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed
you?”
“Do I moind it? I do!”
“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”
“No, bedad.”
“When King Strang's constables came galloping down here to
arrest you, didn't I run in water to my waist to push you off in your
boat?”
“You did, bedad!”
“I didn't give you up to them, and I won't give this family up to
you. They're not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave
Beaver.”
“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.
“How many wives and children have you?”
 “Is it 'how many wives,' says the haythen! Wan wife, by the
powers; and tin childer.”
“Haven't you about as large a family as you can take care of?”
“Begobs, I have.”
“Do you want to take in Jim Baker's Mormon wife and provide for
her? Somebody has to. If you won't let him do it, perhaps you'll do it
yourself.”
“No, bedad!”
“Well, then, you'd better go about your business and let him
alone. I don't see that we have to meddle with these things. Do
you?”
The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to
being plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning
evil for good.
“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to
his confederates.
“There's no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You're not
making a war on women.”
“We're not. Thrue for you.”
“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don't you
get more torches and make a procession down the Galilee road?
You've done about all you can on Mount Pisgah.”
As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with
parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark
room.
“I'd like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes on
Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the
sand-hills. We'd better load the boat right off, Jim.”
 In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth
waiting at the foot. They could see each other only by starlight.
They were alone, for the others had gone out to the boat.
“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her
sweet voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says
he'll build me a little house in your yard.”
“Oh, Elizabeth!”
Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself
into the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no
longer as a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth
kissed her husband's wife as a little sister.
The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind
Elizabeth like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after
the others to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the
indignities of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights
were not even recognized by the society into which she would be
forced. The world was not open to her as to a man. In that day it
would have stoned her if she ventured too far from some protected
fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who could tramp winter snows and
were not despised for their brief marriages may have flashed
through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze a man lighted
around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in all the
swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature
with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown
away?
Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the
footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.
“Take care, Rosanne. Don't stumble, darling!” said the man to
whom Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a
higher law unhusbanded her.
 Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal
without touching him as he lurched over a rock.
He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind
formality to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.
“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up
the lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don't think
there'll be any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”
“I'll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”
“Turn it over to father; he'll see to it. Give him news of us and our
love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about
Beaver.”
“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”
“Good-bye, Cecilia!”
A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the
rush of water on each side of a boat's course, marked the fugitives'
progress towards the anchored smack.
Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the
smoke of her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the
sense of a great company around her. The uninstructed girl from the
little kingdom of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and
loving in hopeless silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to
their reward. For there is a development like the unfolding of a god
for those who suffer in strength and overcome.
 A BRITISH ISLANDER [2]
ELL, I wish you could have been here in Mrs. Gunning's day.
She was theoddest woman on Mackinac. Not that she exerted
herself to attract attention. But she was such a character, and her
manners were so astonishing, that she furnished perennial
entertainment to the few families of us constituting island society.
[2] This story is set down exactly as it was told by the Island
Chronicler.

She was an English woman, born in South Africa, and married to

an American army surgeon, and had lived over a large part of the
world before coming to this fort. She had no children. But her sister
had married Dr. Gunning's brother. And the good-for-nothing pair set
out to follow the English drum-beat around the world, and left a
child for the two more responsible ones to rear. Juliana Gunning was
so deaf she could not hear thunder. But she was quits with nature,
for all that; a wonderfully alluring kind of girl, with big brown eyes
that were better than ears, and that could catch the meaning of
moving lips. It seemed to strangers that she merely evaded
conversation; for she had a sweet voice, a little drawling, and was
witty when she wanted to speak. Juliana couldn't step out of the
surgeon's quarters to walk across the parade-ground without making
every soldier in the fort conscious of her. She was well-shaped and
tall, and a slight pitting of the skin only enhanced the charm of her
large features. She used to dress unlike anybody else, in foreign
things that her aunt gave her, and was always carrying different
kinds of thin scarfs to throw over her face and tantalize the men.
Everybody knew that Captain Markley would marry her if he could.
But along comes Dr. McCurdy, a wealthy widower from the East, and
nothing will do but he must hang about Mackinac week after week,
pretending to need the climate—and he weighing nearly two
hundred—to court Juliana Gunning. The lieutenant's wife said of
Juliana that she would flirt with a half-breed if nothing better
offered. But the lieutenant's wife was a homely, jealous little thing,
and could never have had all the men hanging after her. And if she
had had the chance she might have been as aggravating about
making up her mind between two as Juliana was.
We used to think the girl very good-natured. But those three
people made a queer family. Dr. Gunning was the remnant of a
magnificent man, and he always had a courtly air. He paid little
attention to the small affairs of life, and rated money as nothing. Dr.
Gunning had his peculiarities; but I am not telling you about him. He
was a kind man, and would cross the strait in any weather to attend
a sick half-breed or any other ailing creature, who probably never
paid him a cent. He was fond of the island, and quite satisfied to
spend his life here.
The day I am telling you about, Mrs. Gunning had driven with me
into the village to make some calls. She was very punctilious about
calling upon strangers. If she intended to recognize a newcomer she
called at once. We drove around to the rear of the fort and entered
at the back sally-port, where carriages always enter; but instead of
letting me put her down at the surgeon's quarters, she ordered the
driver to stop in the middle of the parade-ground. Then she got out
and, with never a word, marched down the steps to Captain Markley,
where he was leaning against the front sally-port, looking below into
the town. I didn't know what to do, so I sat and waited. It was the
loveliest autumn morning you ever saw. I remember the beeches
and oaks and maples were spread out like banners to the very
height of the island, all crimson and yellow splashes in the midst of
evergreens. There had been an awful storm the night before, and
you could see down the sally-port how drenched the fort garden was
at the foot of the hill.
Captain Markley had a fearfully depressed look. He was so down
in the mouth that the sentinels noticed it. I saw the one in front of
the western block-house stick his tongue in his cheek and wink at
one pacing below. We heard afterwards that Captain Markley had
been out alone to inspect target-ranges in the pine woods, and
almost ran against Juliana Gunning and Dr. McCurdy sitting on a log.
Before he could get out of the way he overheard the loudest
proposal ever made on Mackinac. It used to be told about in mess,
though how it got out Captain Markley said he did not know, unless
they heard it at the fort.
“I have brought you out here,” the doctor shouted to Juliana, as
loud as a cow lowing, “to tell you that I love you! I want you to be
my wife!”
She behaved as if she didn't hear—I think that minx often had fun
with her deafness—and inclined her head to one side.
So he said it all over again.
“I have brought you to this secluded spot to tell you that I love
you! I want you to be my wife!”
It was like a steamer bellowing on the strait. Then Juliana threw
her scarf over her face, and Captain Markley broke away through the
bushes.
Mrs. Gunning never said a word to me about either of the suitors.
It wasn't because she didn't talk, for she was a great talker. We had
to postpone a card-party one evening, on account of the continuous
flow of Mrs. Gunning's conversation, which never ceased until it was
time for refreshments, there being not a moment's pause for the
tables to be set out.
 I WAS STARTLED TO SEE HER RUSH AT THE CAPTAIN

I was startled to see her rush down at Captain Markley,

brandishing her parasol as if she were going to knock him down. I
thought if she had any preference it would be for an army man; for
you know an army woman's contempt of civilian money and position.
Army women continually want to be moving on; and they hate
bothering with household stuff, such as we prize.
 Captain Markley did look poor-spirited, drooping against the sally-
port, for a man who in his uniform was the most conspicuous figure
to Mackinac girls in a ball-room. Maybe if he had been courting
anything but a statue he might have made a better figure at it.
Juliana was worse than a statue, though; for she could float through
a thousand graceful poses, and drive a man crazy with her eyes. He
wasn't the lover to go out in the woods and shoot a proposal as loud
as a cannon at a girl; and it seems he couldn't get any satisfaction
from her by writing notes.
Mrs. Gunning was drawing off her gloves as she marched at him
with her parasol, and I remember how her emeralds and diamonds
flashed in the sun—old heirlooms. I never saw another woman who
had so many precious stones. She was tall, with that robust English
quality that sometimes goes with slenderness. She and Juliana were
not a bit alike. When she walked, her feet came down pat. I pitied
Captain Markley. By leaning over the carriage I could see him give a
start as Mrs. Gunning pounced at him.
“It's a fine day after the storm, Captain Markley,” says she; and he
lifted his cap and said it was.
Then she made a rush that I thought would drive him down the
cliff, and whirled her parasol around his head like sword-play, talking
about the havoc of the storm. She rippled him from head to foot and
poked at his eyes, and jabbed him, to show how lightning struck the
rocks, Captain Markley all the time moving back and dodging; and to
save my life I couldn't help laughing, though the sentinels above him
saw it. They were pretty well used to her, and rolled their quids in
their cheeks, and winked at one another.
When she had all but thrown him down-hill, she stuck the ferrule
right under his nose and shook it, and says she: “Yet it is now as
fine a day as if no such convulsion had ever threatened the island. It
is often so in this world.”
 He couldn't deny that, miserable as he looked. And I thought she
would let him alone and come and say good-day to me. But no,
indeed! She took him by the arm. Soldiers off duty were lounging on
the benches, and Captain Markley wouldn't let them see him haled
like a prisoner. He marched square-shouldered and erect; and Mrs.
Gunning says to me as they reached the carriage:
“The captain will help you down if you will come with us. I am
going to show him my Shanghai rooster.”
I thanked her, and gladly let him help me down. I wasn't going to
desert the poor fellow when Mrs. Gunning was dealing with him;
and, besides, I wanted to see that rooster myself. We heard such
stories of the way she kept her chickens and labored over all the
domestic animals she gathered around herself at the fort.
By ascending a steep bank on which the western block-house
stands, you know you can look down into the drill-ground—that wide
meadow behind the fort, with quarters at the back. Mrs. Gunning
had an enclosure built outside the wall for her chickens; and there
they were, walking about, scratching the ground, and diverting
themselves as well as they could in their clothes. She had a shed at
one end of the enclosure, and all the hens, walking about or sitting
on nests, wore hoods! Holes were made for their eyes but none for
their beaks, and the eyelets seemed to magnify so that they looked
wrathy as they stretched their necks and quavered in those bags.
Captain Markley and I both burst out laughing, but Mrs. Gunning
explained it all seriously.
“They eat their eggs,” says she; “so I tie hoods on them until I
have collected the eggs for the day.”
I remember some were clawing their head-gear, trying alternate
feet, and two determined hens were trying to peck each other free.
But they were generally resigned, and we might have grown so after
the first minute, if it hadn't been for the rooster.
 Captain Markley roared, and I leaned against the lower part of the
block-house and held my sides. That long-legged, awkward, high-
stepping Shanghai cock was dressed like a man in a suit of clothes—
all but a hat. His coat-sleeves extended over his wings, and when he
flapped them to crow, and stuck his claws out of his trousers-legs, I
wept tears on my handkerchief. Mrs. Gunning talked straight ahead
without paying any attention to our laughter. If it ever had been
funny to her it had ceased to be so. She had not brought Captain
Markley there to amuse him.
“Look at that Shanghai rooster now,” says she. “I brought him up
from the South. I put him among the hens and they picked all his
feathers off. He was as bare, captain, as your hand. He was literally
hen-pecked. First one would step up to him and pull out a feather;
then another; and he, poor fool, did nothing but cower against the
fence. It never seemed to enter his brain-pan he could put a stop to
the torture. There he was, without a feather to cover himself with,
and the cool autumn nights coming on. So I took some gray cloth
and made him these clothes. He would have been picked to the
bone if I hadn't. But they put spunk into him. That Shanghai rooster
has found out he has to assert himself, captain, and he does assert
himself.”
I saw Captain Markley turn red, and I knew he wished the sentinel
wasn't standing guard a few feet away in front of that block-house.
 THE QUARTERS

She might have let him alone after she had given him that thrust,
and gone on to her house, and said good-bye in the usual way. But
just as he was helping me down it happened that Juliana and Dr.
McCurdy appeared through the rear sally-port, which they must have
reached by skirting the wall instead of crossing the drill-field. As
soon as Mrs. Gunning saw them she stiffened, and clubbed her
umbrella at Captain Markley again. He couldn't get away, so he
stood his ground.
“See that creature begin to curvet and roll her eyes!” says Mrs.
Gunning. “If the parade-ground were full of men I think she would
prance over the parapet. At my age she may have some sense and
feeling. But I would be glad to see her in the hands of a man who
knew how to assert himself.”
“May I ask,” says Captain Markley, “what you mean by a man's
asserting himself, Mrs. Gunning?”
She made such a pounce at him with the parasol that her waist
began to rip in the back.
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