“'I 'low to keep on tryin', says Singin' Sandy. 'And ef I don't make out to do it, there's my buddy growin' up and comin' along. And some day he'll do it,' he says, not boasting and not arguing, but cheerfully and confidently as though he was telling of a thing that was already the same as settled. “Captain Braxton Montjoy reared away back on his high heels--he wore high heels to make him look taller, I reckon--and he looked straight at Singin' Sandy standing there so little and insignificant and raggedy, and all gormed over with mud and wet with branch water, and smelling of the woods and the new ground. There was a purple mark still under one of Sandy's eyes and a scabbed place on top of one of his ears where Harve Allen had pretty nigh torn it off the side of his head. “'By Godfrey,' says Captain Braxton Montjoy, 'by Godfrey, sir,' and he began pulling off his glove which was dainty and elegant, like everything else about him. 'Sir,' he says to Singin' Sandy, 'I desire to shake your hand.' “So they shook hands and Captain Braxton Montjoy stepped one side and bowed with ceremony to Singin' Sandy, and Singin' Sandy stepped in toward Harve Allen humming to himself. “For this once, anyhow, Harve wasn't for charging right into the mix-up at the first go-off. It almost seemed like he wanted to back away. But Singin' Sandy lunged out and hit him in the face and stung him, and then Harve's brute fighting instinct must have come back into his body, and he flailed out with both fists and staggered Singin' Sandy back. Harve ran in on him and they locked and there was a whirl of bodies and down they went, in the dirt, with Harve on top as per usual. He licked Singin' Sandy, but he didn't lick him nigh as hard as he'd always done it up till then. When he got through, Singin' Sandy could get up off the ground by himself and that was the first time he had been able to do so. He stood there a minute swaying a little on his legs and wiping the blood out of his eyes where it ran down from a little cut right in the edge of his hair. He spit and we saw that two of his front teeth were gone, broken short off up in the gums; and Singin' Sandy felt with the tip of his tongue at the place where they'd been. 'In a month,' he says, and away he goes, singing his tuneless song. “Well, I watched Harve Allen close that next month--and I think nearly all the other people did too. It was a strange thing too, but he went through the whole month without beating up anybody. Before that he'd never let a month pass without one fight anyhow. Yet he drank more whiskey than was common even with him. Once I ran up on him sitting on a drift log down in the willows by himself, seemingly studying over something in his mind.