Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/18

 on board. She can't follow me past the guard, and we sail at daybreak. . ."

"She'd never think to look for you in Ratsey's, she wouldn't," said the other. "So come on."

But the refuser continued to refuse.

"Much obliged just the same," he said, "but enough's enough. She's wearing the same old hatpin she dipped into the Fleming's eyeball, and she's full of the same old juice. I'm through."

"Shore," said the tempter, "would be a 'eavenly place, Bill, if it weren't for the women. Whenever you see a man in a desperate hurry to get somewhere else, it's a ten to one shot he's running away from some woman or other."

The latter half of the phrase was lost to John Eaton, who had approached and passed as inconspicuously as possible. And of the snatches of loud spoken conversation which he had overheard he remembered only one succinct statement:

"Shore would be a 'eavenly place, Bill, if it weren't for the women."

That he remembered until his dying day; that and something about a hatpin that had been dipped into an eyeball.

Probably the first event which made a strong and unshatterable impression upon Edward Eaton was the fact that upon a certain afternoon in De-