"Hold on! hold on!" called Budge Isham, rising solemnly to his feet, with hands uplifted in protest; "if Ike doesn't stop, he'll have us all standing on our heads. There's a brand of liquor down in Sacramento called 'Wolf Eye;' I don't make any charges, gentlemen, against my friend Ike, but you can draw your inferences. Wolf Eye won't do." A general laugh greeted this sally, seeing which the indignant Ike turned the tables upon Budge with an admirable piece of sarcasm. "Seeing as how all of us together don't know 'nough to git up a name that will suit, I move that the college eddycated gentleman supplies the brains and does it himself." The crushing irony of this remark was spoiled by Budge accepting it in all seriousness. He bowed his head and gracefully thanked the satirical Vose. "I shall be very glad to do so. The committee meant well enough, but the trouble was that there were too many fools on it----" At this point Wade Ruggles sprang to his feet, with the fierce question: "Does the gentleman refer to _me_?" His hand was at his hip on the butt of his revolver and matters looked squally, but the tactful Budge quelled the rising storm with Chesterfieldian grace. Waving his hand and bowing, he said: "I did not intend the remotest reference to you." Vose Adams came up promptly. "Then it's _me_ and I'm ready to make any man eat his words." "My good friend is mistaken; nothing could induce me to apply such a term to him; I hold him in too high esteem." Since this left Ike Hoe as the only remaining member, he began to show signs of explosion, perceiving which the incomprehensible Budge proceeded to mollify him. "And Ike knows that I would be the last person in the world to slur a gentleman from whom I as well as the others have received so much instruction." Ike was mystified. He looked at the other members of the committee and then into the faces of the group. He couldn't make it out. "If it's all the same, Mr. Chairman, since the gentleman has said there was too many fools on the committee, and has just explained that he didn't mean any one of us three, I'll be obliged if he'll explain who in thunder he did mean." This sounded unanswerable, but the cunning Budge was equal to the occasion. "It gives me pleasure to answer the question of the gentleman: my remark was made in a Pickwickian sense." He leaned forward with a beaming smile, as if his explanation left nothing to be added. No one understood to what he referred, but all were too proud to admit the fact. There was a general nodding of heads, and Ike, with the manner of a man who magnanimously accepts the humble apology of him whom he has worsted, leaned back on his stool and audibly remarked: "That makes it all right." Budge Isham resumed his seat, when he was reminded that he was expected to submit a name for the new settlement.