"I am glad you robbed him, Colonel. I wish you could rob them all. If a child is born to one of them we have to tell of it, and mention delicately how noble the father is and how lovely the mother is. If one of them dies we have to jeopardize our immortal souls trying to make out a character for him. They want us every day; we hold up their business and their reputations, beginning at the cradle, ending only at the grave." "What kind of character would you give me, were I to die?" "Try it, Colonel! Try it! And if 'over the divide' it should be possible for you to look back and read the daily papers, when your shade gets hold of my notice, I promise you it shall be glad that you are dead." "But what about that unregenerate soul that you were going to tell me of--has some broker sold out some widow's stocks?" "No: worse than that." "Has some one burglarized some hospital or orphan asylum?" suggested the Colonel. "Oh, no. Old Angus Jacobs, you know, is rich. Among strangers he parades his thin veneering of reading, and poses as though all his vaults were stuffed with reserves of knowledge. Well, while East last spring, he ran upon a distinguished publisher there, with whom he agreed that he would, on his return, write and send for publication an article on the West. "He came and begged me to write it, confessing that he had deceived the publisher, and asserting that, he must keep up the deception, or the integrity of the West would be injured in the estimation of that publisher. "I went to work, wrote an article, became enthused as I wrote, wrote it over, spent as much as three solid days upon it, and when it was finished I looked upon my work, and lo, it was good. "Then, at my own expense, I had it carefully copied and gave the copy to old Angus. He sent it East. To-day he received a dozen copies and a letter of profuse praise and thanks from the publisher. "I saw the old thief give one of the copies to a literary man from San Francisco, telling him, cheerfully, as he did, that he dashed the article off hastily, that most of the language was crude and awkward, but it might entertain him a little on the train going to San Francisco." "I never heard of anything meaner or more depraved than that," indignantly remarked the Colonel, "except when I read the funeral service over an old Dutchman's child once, in Downieville. Speaking of it afterward, the old Hessian said: "'Dot Colonel's reading vos fine, but he dond vos haf dot prober look uf regret vot he ought to haf had'--but here comes the Professor." Professor Stoneman joined the pair, and when the greetings were over the Professor said: