Barry's tone expressed doubtful approval. "Neil is a good sort, dad, awfully reckless, but I like him," said Barry. "He is up and up with it all."

"Now, what about your afternoon?" said his father.

"Well, to begin with, I had a dose of my old friend, the enemy."

"Barry, you don't tell me! Your asthma!" His father sat back from the table gazing at him in dismay. "And I thought that was all done with."

"So did I, dad. But it really didn't amount to much. Probably some stomach derangement, more likely some of that pollen which is floating around now. I passed through a beaver meadow where they were cutting hay, and away I went in a gale of sneezing, forty miles an hour. But I'm all right now, dad. I'm telling you the truth. You know I do."

"Yes, yes, I know," said his father, concern and relief mingling in his voice, "but you don't know how to take care of yourself, Barry. But go on with your tale."

"Well, as I was panting along like a 'heavey horse,' as Harry Hobbs would say,--not really too bad, dad,--along comes that big rancher, Stewart Duff, driving his team of pinto bronchos, and with him a chap named Bayne, from Red Pine Creek. He turned out to be an awfully decent sort. And Duff's dog, Slipper, ranging on ahead, a beautiful setter."

"Yes, I have seen him."

They discussed for a few moments the beauties and points of Duff's Slipper, for both were keen sportsmen, and both were devoted to dogs.

Then Barry went back to his tale and gave an account of what had happened during the ride home.

"You see Slipper ranging about got 'on point' and beautiful work it was, too. Out jumped Duff with his gun, ready to shoot, though, of course, he knew it was out of season and that he was breaking the law. Well, just as Slipper flushed the birds, I shouted to Duff that he was shooting out of season. He missed."

"Oh, he was properly wrathful at my spoiling his shot," cried the young man.

"I don't know that I blame him, Barry," said his father thoughtfully.

"It is an annoying thing to be shouted at with your gun on a bird, you know, extremely annoying."

"But he was breaking the law, dad!" cried Barry indignantly.

"I know, I know. But after all--"

"But, dad, you can't sit there and tell me that you don't condemn him for shooting out of season. You know nothing makes you more furious than hearing about chaps who pot chicken out of season."

"I know, I know, my boy." The father was apparently quite distressed.

"You are quite right, but--"

"Now, dad, I won't have it! You are not to tell me that I had no business to stop him if I could. Besides, the law is the law, and sport is sport."

"I quite agree, Barry. Believe me, I quite agree. Yet all the same, a chap does hate to have his shot spoiled, and to shout at a fellow with his gun on a bird,--well, you'll excuse me, Barry, but it is hardly the sporting thing."

"Sporting! Sporting!" said Barry. "I know that I hated to do it, but it was right. Besides talk about 'sporting'--what about shooting out of season?"

"Yes, yes. Well, we won't discuss it. Go on, Barry."

"But I don't like it, dad. I don't like to think that you don't approve of what I do. It was a beastly hard thing to do, anyway. I had to make myself do it. It was my duty." The young man sat looking anxiously at his father.

"Well, my boy," said his father, "I may be wrong, but do you think you are always called upon to remonstrate with every law breaker? No, listen to me," he continued hurriedly. "What I mean is, must you or any of us assume responsibility for every criminal in the land?"

Barry sat silent a moment, considering this proposition.

"I wish I knew, dad. You know, I have often said that to excuse myself after I have funked a thing, and let something go by without speaking up against it."

"Funked it!"

"Yes. Funked standing up for the right thing, you know."

"Funked it!" said his father again. "You wouldn't do that, Barry?"

"Oh, wouldn't I, though? I am afraid you don't know me very well, dad.

However, I rather think I had started him up before that, you know. You won't like this either. But I may as well go through with it. You know, he was swearing and cursing most awfully, just in his ordinary talk you know, and that is a thing I can't stand, so I up and told him he was using too many 'damns.'"

"You did, eh?" In spite of himself the father could not keep the surprise out of his voice. "Well, that took some nerve, at any rate."

"There you are again, dad! You think I had no right to speak. But somehow I can't help feeling I was right. For don't you see, it would have seemed a bit like lowering the flag to have kept silent."

"Then for God's sake speak out, lad! I do not feel quite the same way as you, but it is what you think yourself that must guide you. But go on, go on."

"Well, I assure you he was in a proper rage, and if it hadn't been for Bayne I believe he would have trimmed me to a peak, administered a fitting castigation, I mean."

"He would, eh?" said the father with a grim smile. "I should like to see him try."

"So should I, dad, if you were around. I think I see you--feint with the right, then left, right, left! bing! bang! bung! All over but the shiver, eh, dad? It would be sweet! But," he added regretfully, "that's the very thing a fellow cannot do."

"Cannot do? And why not, pray? It is what every fellow is in duty bound to do to a bully of that sort."

"Yes, but to be quite fair, dad, you could hardly call Duff a bully. At least, he wasn't bullying me. As a matter of fact, I was bullying him.

Oh, I think he had reason to be angry. When a chap undertakes to pull another chap up for law breaking, perhaps he should be prepared to take the consequences. But to go on. Bayne stepped in--awfully decent of him, too,--when just at that moment, as novelists say, with startling suddenness occurred an event that averted the impending calamity. Along came Neil Fraser, no less, in that new car of his, in a whirlwind of noise and dust, honking like a flock of wild geese. Well, you should have seen those bronchos. One lurch, and we were on the ground, a beautiful upset, and the bronchos in an incipient runaway, fortunately checked by your humble servant. Duff, in a new and real rage this time, up with his gun and banged off both barrels after the motor car, by this time honking down the trail."

"By Jove! he deserved it," said the father. "Those motor fellows make me long to do murder at times."

"That's because you have no car, Dad, of course."

"Did he hit him, do you think?"

"No. My arm happened to fly up, the gun banged toward the zenith.

Nothing doing!"

"Well, Barry, you do seem to have run foul of Mr. Duff."

"Three times, dad. But each time prevented him from breaking the law and doing himself and others injury. Would you have let him off this last time, dad?"

"No, no, boy. Human life has the first claim upon our care. You did quite right, quite right. Ungovernable fool he must be! Shouldn't be allowed to carry a gun."

"So Bayne declared," said Barry.

"Well, you have had quite an exciting afternoon. But finish your tea and get ready for the meeting. I will wash up."

"Not if I know it, dad. You take your saw-horse and do me a little Handel or Schubert. Do, please," entreated his son. "I want that before meeting more than anything else. I want a change of mood. I confess I am slightly rattled. My address is all prepared, but I must have atmosphere before I go into the meeting."

His father took the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in carefully tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he wandered into the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from thence to Schubert's Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the Serenade, when he was checked by his son.