The other made no answer, but struggled like a wildcat, while Long Mike stood smiling and slowly tightening his awful grip. Not until the bones began to crack did the defeated man give up, but presently he gasped “Enough,” and fell, half-dead, to the ground as the other released his hold. “Oi’m thinkin’, belike,” said Stumpy, as they watched the stage start off, “thot we might have a party up here from Dubuque next week, I don’t know. Thim social visits is foine divarsion.” X STUMPY VIOLATES ETIQUETTE The fate of the one-eyed man had not been forgotten in Brownsville, but the lapse of time since his taking off had been sufficient to allay the excitement which it had occasioned. This excitement, it may be said, was not the result of any fervent esteem which the one-eyed man might have enjoyed among his fellow citizens if he had been a person of more congenial temperament than he was. As a matter of fact, he had various traits of character which had distinctly failed to commend him to the hearty liking of the community, and while he lived there were not a few citizens who counted him among the least desirable of their number. Brownsville, however, was not habituated to homicide. Fights there were in Brownsville not infrequently, and a good shindy was commonly reckoned among the pleasurable variations to the monotony that characterized life in the little river town for something like three hundred and sixty days in the year. Such fights, however, were usually carried to a more or less satisfactory conclusion without loss of life, and the sudden demise of the one-eyed man had aroused some horror, as well as a strong feeling of antipathy for the man who shot him. This feeling was also tempered by the lukewarmness of the sentiment of the community toward the one-eyed man, but the prevailing opinion was that Wharton had gone a little too far in shooting. There was no disputing the fact, however, that it was a fair fight, and that the one-eyed man had brought it on himself, so there had been no attempt made to put Wharton on trial for the killing. He had gone away from Brownsville, and the general satisfaction at that had, of itself, tempered the hostility he had provoked, which hostility was indeed no very powerful sentiment. When the _Creole Belle_, however, tied up at the Brownsville landing, just at the edge of a summer evening, some months after the shooting, and Mr. Wharton stepped ashore, he failed to receive any enthusiastic welcome. Strangers who came ashore at Brownsville were not so numerous as to allow of his escaping recognition, and most of those whom he greeted on his way from the landing to the barroom responded with a cool “Howdy,” but no one proffered a handshake, and none gave him spontaneous greeting.