We had no newspaper in our station. A paper is an expensive luxury to the publisher, and besides we didn’t need any. Mrs. Tinkle, the wife of the colonel, was our newspaper and news-carrier all in one, a host in that direction. If we had anything good, bad or indifferent, that we wanted to circulate, and there were many things that no living man would dare to print unless he was prepared for death, we got them all to Mrs. Tinkle, and they went with the wind, or as fast as her ponies could take her. When my friend said he was going to Mrs. Tinkle’s, I knew and could have sworn to it, that before they had closed their eyes in sleep that night every one in the station would learn that Smith and Japhet were half brothers! Confound the impudence of the fellow! If he had only treated me with the least respect I would have never given a hint, but his continued bullying I could not endure. I felt as badly about the relationship as he possibly could. It would not be a credit to either of us. I will say, however, that he never troubled himself about “Japhet in search of his father” again. Some one told me that Smith had denounced the story as a red-hot lie, and asked if they would take him to be a fool. Yet everybody believed the story, for they knew the character of old Smith too well to doubt it, and probably believed young Smith to be a fool. About that photograph, how did I happen to have it in my pocket just at the right time? I knew that Smith as a magistrate was on that committee, that he couldn’t well turn his back on me, as he had before done, that if he noticed me at all he would give me a shot or a thrust of some kind, so with deliberate forethought, or malice prepense, if that is a better term, I put the photograph in my pocket, ready for I knew not what, anything that might come. In time of peace, prepare for war. So did I. It may be thought that I had some streaks of wickedness in me. I have often thought that myself. I have gone through enough ill-usage in my life to make a saint profane and revengeful. As I do not believe in any erasing or washing away of sins or forgetting them, I try to be as good as I can be under adverse circumstances, and never sin unless I am absolutely compelled to. I have ever desired to live a life of peace and righteousness, if only others would let me do so. If a dog snarls or bites at me, when I am quietly passing, I feel like striking him, or when a fellow mortal deliberately hurts me, I am inclined to give him one in return, treating him as I do the dog. The many kicks and insults that have come to me along the way have reminded me that Cain and I were alike in this respect, that we both had a mark put upon us, but with this difference, that his mark was that any one seeing him should not kill him, and my mark was to let any one who saw me wipe his feet on me if he could, or give me some mean thrust. But who is there that has not a mark of some kind? CHAPTER XXIII.