"Caleb," replies the other, "I am a more generous man than you. Take back the counterfeit bill and keep the silver dollars you have stolen. I will assist you further by inventing a new way of killing lice." "Lice, sir?" roared Caleb. "Where are they? Do you mean----?" "I mean a post is a good louse-killer, but a little oil and a match are better." Caleb, as you know by this time, was a coward. He outran fire-and-oil justice, and was caught in the mesh of circumstances. He leaped over a beehive and alighted between two lines of barbed-wire fence. After spending the night with barbed-wire and bees he was very properly removed to the hospital. "His legs must be amputated," said the physicians. "That means what?" asked Caleb, arousing himself as from a dream. "Death, perchance," said they. "That means the morgue?" asked he, with a grunt. "For such as you, yes," replied one. "My legs, gentlemen, my legs! The morgue! The morgue! I see it. How cold it is! Gentlemen, are you gentlemen? My legs! My legs!" The next day he learned that his legs had been taken off. The following day he roared about the morgue and fought with both hands. He cried out at intervals: "Off! Off, you doctors! My legs are here to carry me from the morgue, but you are waiting to cut them off again. Off, you butchers! Come, my right leg! Come, my left! On, my right leg! On my left! Yes! Yes! Welcome, tried friends! Down the steps now! Halfway down are we! Back! Back, you butchers! You shall not! My right foot--you shall not turn around. 'Tis done. The toes are where the heel should be. I go a step forward and fall back a step. Your knives are sharp, you butchers. My right leg is off and hops upstairs. My left leg is off and hops downstairs. My body falls and is carried to the morgue. The morgue, gentlemen, is so cold--so cold!" After this there were several hours of indistinct raving. The next day his legless body was upon a marble slab in the morgue. His fellow-gamblers, hearing of his fate, begged his body that they might give it a "decent" burial. They removed it to an old out-house and sat up with it the first night. Why do they gaze upon it so often? Why do their hands touch his face and hands? Would they learn a lesson from the cold, deathly touch? The next night, the next, the next, and the next it is alone. You searchers of the city's offal, you living buzzards who remove the dead and rotten of your kind, fling open the doors! Is that Caleb you find? 'Tis a part of him. His legs are buried somewhere. His ears and fingers are in the pockets of his fellow-gamblers. Now carry out Caleb minus Caleb. Stop up your nose--stop up your nose! RODNEY Rodney was an illegitimate child. He knew not what this meant, but the sting of it embittered his young life.