By-and-by he got the best of his emotions, come over to me and blew a lot of words across my ears. From a familiar sound here and there, I gathered he was trying to hold up the American language; but it must have been the brand Columbus found on his first vacation, for I couldn't squeeze any information out of it. I shook my head, and he spread his teeth and jumped loose again. "No use," says I. "I dare say you understand, but the only clue I have to those sounds is that you've eat something that ain't agreed with you. Habla V. Espanol?" "Si, senor!" says he. So then we got at it, although it wasn't smooth skidding, either; for my Spanish was the good old Castilian I'd learned in Panama, whilst his was a mixture of Greaser, sheepblat, and Apache, flavoured with a Scotch brogue that would smoke the taste of whiskey at a thousand yards. He explained that while he wasn't fully acquainted with my reasons for assault-and-batterin' him in the first place, he was deeply grateful for my savin' his life in the second place. "Yes," says I. "But why do you cry?" Well, that was because his feelin's was moved. I'll admit that if I sat on a rock in the Bill Williams Mountains, thinking myself the only two-legged critter around, and somebody come and kicked my bagpipes in the air and dog-rassled me down forty rod of hillside, afterwards fishing me out of the drink, my feelin's would be moved too, but not in that way. And at the time I'm telling you about, I was young--so young it makes me tremble to think of it--and I knew a heap of things I don't know now. For this I thought slightin' of Grandma, notwithstanding the tall opposition he put up. Somehow I couldn't seem to cut loose from the effect of his short skirts and fancy work. But I let on to be satisfied. He amused me, did Grandma. Next he invites me to come up to his shanty and have a drop of what he frivolously called "fusky"--"_Uno poquito de fuskey--aquardiente--senor_." Wisht you could have heard his Spanish--all mixed up--like this: He says he's "greetin'"--meanin' yellin', while it's "grito" in Spanish, and his pronunciation had whiskers on it till you could hardly tell the features. But we got along. When we struck the cabin the old lad done the honours noble. I've met some stylish Spaniards and Frenchmen and Yanks and Johnny Bulls in my time, yet I can't remember aryone who threw himself better'n Colin Hiccup. There's no place where good manners shows to better advantage than on a homely man; the constant surprise between the way he looks and the way he acts keeps you interested. "To you, senor," says Colin. "Let this dampen the fires of animosity."