“In course you didn't speak, Tommy,” said Johnson, deprecatingly. “You ain't a boy to go for to play an ole soaker like me. That's wot I like you for. Thet's wot I seed in you from the first. I sez, 'Thet 'ere boy ain't goin' to play you, Johnson! You can go your whole pile on him, when you can't trust even a bar-keep.' Thet's wot I said. Eh?” This time Tommy prudently took no notice of the interrogation, and Johnson went on: “Ef I was to ask you another question, you wouldn't go to play me neither,--would you, Tommy?” “No,” said the boy. “Ef I was to ask you,” continued Johnson, without heeding the reply, but with a growing anxiety of eye and a nervous twitching of his lips,--“ef I was to ask you, fur instance, ef that was a jackass rabbit thet jest passed,--eh?--you'd say it was or was not, ez the case may be. You wouldn't play the ole man on thet?” “No,” said Tommy, quietly, “it WAS a jackass rabbit.” “Ef I was to ask you,” continued Johnson, “ef it wore, say, fur instance, a green hat with yaller ribbons, you wouldn't play me, and say it did, onless,”--he added, with intensified cunning,--“onless it DID?” “No,” said Tommy, “of course I wouldn't; but then, you see, IT DID.” “It did?” “It did!” repeated Tommy, stoutly; “a green hat with yellow ribbons--and--and--a red rosette.” “I didn't get to see the ros-ette,” said Johnson, with slow and conscientious deliberation, yet with an evident sense of relief; “but that ain't sayin' it warn't there, you know. Eh?” Tommy glanced quietly at his companion. There were great beads of perspiration on his ashen-gray forehead and on the ends of his lank hair; the hand which twitched spasmodically in his was cold and clammy, the other, which was free, had a vague, purposeless, jerky activity, as if attached to some deranged mechanism. Without any apparent concern in these phenomena, Tommy halted, and, seating himself on a log, motioned his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word. Slight as was the act, perhaps no other incident of their singular companionship indicated as completely the dominance of this careless, half-effeminate, but self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed, abnormally excited man. “It ain't the square thing,” said Johnson, after a pause, with a laugh that was neither mirthful nor musical, and frightened away a lizard that had been regarding the pair with breathless suspense,--“it ain't the square thing for jackass rabbits to wear hats, Tommy,--is it, eh?” “Well,” said Tommy, with unmoved composure, “sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. Animals are mighty queer.” And here Tommy went off in an animated, but, I regret to say, utterly untruthful and untrustworthy account of the habits of California fauna, until he was interrupted by Johnson. “And snakes, eh, Tommy?” said the man, with an abstracted air, gazing intently on the ground before him.