But the worst of all was when Bill made friends with the tramp. Squint and I went out to the cave one morning to get Bill's breakfast for him, and as we got near we heard two sets of snores. Bill's snore you could tell a long way off, he sort of gargled his snores and they ended up with kind of a choke and an explosion. But the other snore was more of a steady whistling sound. We ran across the fellow sudden, and it like to have frightened us out of a year's growth. He was lying just inside the cave with his hat pulled over his face, but he was snoring with one eye open. It peered out from under the brim of his hat; it was half-hidden, but it was open all right, and it was staring straight at us. It wasn't human; no one with good intentions would lie there like that and snore like he was asleep and watch folks at the same time on the sly. We couldn't even run; we stood there with that regular see-saw snore coming and going, and that awful eye burning into the centres of our souls, as Squint says later, and thought our end had come. But he waked up and opened the other eye, and then we saw the first one was glass and he hadn't meant any harm by it. He was right sorry he'd scared us, he said; but we'd have to get used to that eye, for _he_ allowed he was kidnapped, too. It was two days before he quit being our captive and left, and they are among the saddest days I ever spent. He left because Bill's whiskey was gone; and the afternoon he left, Bill was helpless. When we saw Bill in that fix it gave us an idea how to get rid of him. That night he was still weak and easy to handle. So we slipped the handcuffs on him and took him back and locked him into the calaboose again. Then we put signs and notices around town that read this way: _Ha Ha Ha_ _Did you ever get left! this town joshed me for years but I have got even--the joke is on to you--I wasn't kidnapped a tall--who is the suckers now?_ _Bill Patterson._ And that town was so mad that when they found Bill in the jail again there was talk of handling him pretty rough. But it all turned into josh. Bill, when he woke up in the calaboose, thought he had just had a dream at first, and denied he had ever been absent. Then when he saw they all took him for a deep joker he began to act like he was a joker. And before long he got to thinking he really had played that trick on the town. When they used to ask him how on earth he got into and out of the calaboose without the keys, he would wink very mysterious, and look important, and nod and chuckle to himself and say that was the best part of the joke and he intended to keep it to himself. But one day when he was almost sober he saw Squint and me on the street and stared at us long and hard like he was trying to recollect something, and scratched his head and said: “You boys didn't always used to live in this town, did you?” “Uh-huh,” says I.