"Hold yer tongue, Tom Davis," said Kentuck. "Hulloa, Bob! take my hand, won't ye? I'll introduce ye to my friends. My pardner is Huxly--a tip-top feller, as you'll diskiver fur yerself. Davis' pardner is Randolph--Gentleman Bill, we call him fur short, he's so nice and perlite. He's from yer State, too, I reckon." "Randolphs of Booneville," said Gentleman Bill; rising and extending his hand. Matheny, who was a mild-looking man of about fifty, with a hesitating manner and rather care-worn countenance, half concealed under a wide-brimmed, dusty black hat, instead of meeting half-way the extended hand of his friend's friend, thrust his own into his pockets and gazed fixedly at young Randolph. "Be ye Boone Randolph, or be ye his sperrit?" he asked, hoarsely. "Neither, quite," said the young man, smiling, yet a little flushed. "I am son of Boone Randolph of Booneville, if you know who he was." Matheny turned and hurried out of the crowd, followed by Kentuck, who wanted to have explained this singular conduct of Bob's towards his friends. As there was no witness of their conversation, its meaning can only be guessed at by another which took place two hours later, after Matheny had turned in at the Traveler's Rest. It was late, even for him, when Kentuck started for his lodgings at the other end of the long, densely crowded street--crowded not only with buildings of wood and canvas, but choked up with monstrous freight wagons, and their numerous horse and mule-teams, for which there was not stable-room enough in all Wilson's Bar. Stumbling along the uneven sidewalk, often touching with his feet some unhoused vagabond, Kentuck was about to mount the stairs which led to his bedroom, when some one touched him on the shoulder, and the voice of Gentleman Bill addressed him: "I beg your pardon, Kentuck; but you've been with Matheny, haven't you? I want to know why he wouldn't shake hands. He told you, of course?" "Waal, I'm a friend of Bob's, ye know, Bill; an' he is mighty rough on you, sure. Better not say nothin' about it." "That wouldn't suit me, Kentuck. I want to understand something about the matter which concerns me so evidently. Come, out with it, and I'll leave you to go to bed." "Waal, you heerd Tom Davis' blab this evenin'; an' you know that Bob's got the idee into his intelleck that the cuss of a sart'in man as he onct wronged is a-stickin' to him yit, an' never will let loose till he passes in his checks?" "Who was the man?" "Boone Randolph, of Booneville." "My father?" "Yaas, yer pap. He's down powerful on your pap, that's sart'in. Sez he to me: 'Loh! that's the ornary whelp ov the devil that cussed me. Old's I am I'd like to fight him, fur the sake o' the man that I knowed onct. I feel my young blood a-risin'; he looks so mighty like Boone Randolph.' But I tole him he war a fool to talk ov fightin' yer; ye'd whip him all ter flinders."