“I had one of them on this ranch five years ago, and I’ll tell you about it, so that you can see the nub of this whole question. I didn’t pan out particularly well those days—drank more whisky than was prescribed for me and didn’t seem to care for my duty as a patriotic American citizen; so I took that pagan in, as a kind of cook. But when I got religion over at the Hill and they talked of running me for the Legislature it was given to me to see the light. But what was I to do? If I gave him the go somebody else would take him, and mightn’t treat him white. _What_ was I to do? What would any good Christian do, especially one new to the trade and full to the neck with the brotherhood of Man and the fatherhood of God?” Jo. paused for a reply, with an expression of unstable satisfaction, as of one who has solved a problem by a distrusted method. Presently he rose and swallowed a glass of whisky from a full bottle on the counter, then resumed his story. “Besides, he didn’t count for much—didn’t know anything and gave himself airs. They all do that. I said him nay, but he muled it through on that line while he lasted; but after turning the other cheek seventy and seven times I doctored the dice so that he didn’t last forever. And I’m almighty glad I had the sand to do it.” Jo.’s gladness, which somehow did not impress me, was duly and ostentatiously celebrated at the bottle. “About five years ago I started in to stick up a shack. That was before this one was built, and I put it in another place. I set Ah Wee and a little cuss named Gopher to cutting the timber. Of course I didn’t expect Ah Wee to help much, for he had a face like a day in June and big black eyes—I guess maybe they were the damn’dest eyes in this neck o’ woods.” While delivering this trenchant thrust at common sense Mr. Dunfer absently regarded a knot-hole in the thin board partition separating the bar from the living-room, as if that were one of the eyes whose size and color had incapacitated his servant for good service.