"_We?_ No, sir. _I'm_ going--alone! What I'm doing now, sir, is only the result or calm reflection--of lying awake nights taking points and jest spottin' the whole situation. And I'm convinced, Peter, that I can stay with you no longer. You've been hackin' the keen edge of my finer feelin's; playin' it very low down on my moral and religious nature, generally ringin' in a cold deck on my spiritual condition for the last five years. You've jest cut up thet rough with my higher emotions thet there ain't enough left to chip in on a ten-cent ante. Five years ago," continued Jack, coolly, brushing his curls before the glass, "I fell into your hands a guileless, simple youth, in the first flush of manhood, knowin' no points, easily picked up on my sensibilities, and travellin', so to speak, on my shape! And where am I now? Echo answers 'where?' and passes for a euchre! No, Peter, I leave you to-night. Wretched misleader of youth, gummy old man with the strawberry eyebrows, farewell!" Evidently this style of exordium was no novelty to Pete, for without apparently paying the least attention to it, he went on surlily packing his master's valise. When he had finished he looked up at Mr. Hamlin, who was humming, in a heart-broken way, "_Yes, we must part_," varied by occasional glances of exaggerated reproach at Pete, and said, as he shouldered the valise-- "Dis yer ain't no woman foolishness, Mars Jack, like down at dat yar Mission?" "Your suggestion, Peter," returned Jack, with dignity, "emanates from a moral sentiment debased by Love Feasts and Camp Meetings, and an intellect weakened by Rum and Gum and the contact of Lager Beer Jerkers. It is worthy of a short-card sharp and a keno flopper, which I have, I regret to say, long suspected you to be. Farewell! You will stay here until I come back. If I don't come back by the day after to-morrow, come to One Horse Gulch. Pay the bill, and don't knock down for yourself more than seventy-five per cent. Remember I am getting old and feeble. You are yet young, with a brilliant future before you. Git." He tossed a handful of gold on the bed, adjusted his hat carefully over his curls, and strode from the room. In the lower hall he stopped long enough to take aside Mr. Raynor, and with an appearance of the greatest conscientiousness, to correct an error of two feet in the measurements he had given him that morning of an enormous pine tree in whose prostrate trunk he, Mr. Hamlin, had once found a peaceful, happy tribe of one hundred Indians living. Then lifting his hat with marked politeness to Mrs. Raynor, and totally ignoring the presence of Mr. Raynor's mentor and companion, he leaped lightly into the buggy and drove away. "An entertaining fellow," said Mr. Raynor, glancing after the cloud of dust that flew from the untarrying wheels of Mr. Hamlin's chariot. "And so gentlemanly," smiled Mrs. Raynor.