The next moment, with a stomp and a slam, and without knocking, One-Eye made a whirlwind entrance into the kitchen, and halted, his wide hat grotesquely over one ear, a quid of tobacco distending that cheek which the hat brim touched, a score of questions looking from that single eye, and every hair on the front of those shaggy breeches fairly standing out straight. "Wal?" he demanded, banging the door so hard behind him that all the dishes in the cupboard rattled. He had on gauntlets. Their cuffs reached half-way to his elbows. These added mightily to his warlike appearance. "A-a-a-a-h!" greeted Father Pat, joyously. So this was the person whose arrival had been awaited! Nonchalantly Big Tom shifted his weight from foot to foot, and chuckled through the stubble of his beard. "One-Eye!" cried Cis. "Oh, I'm so glad you've come! Oh, One-Eye, he tied us to the table all night! And he whipped Johnnie with the rope!" That lone green eye began to roll--to Cis's face, seeing the truth written there, and the story of her long hours of suffering; to the countenance of the priest, to ask, dumbly, if any living man had ever heard anything more outrageous than this; then, "By the Great Horn Spoon!" he breathed, and again stomped one foot, like an angry steer. Big Tom's smile widened. Now, the Westerner crossed to Johnnie, bent, and with gentle fingers held under the boy's chin, studied those welts across the pale cheeks. "Crimini!" he murmured. "Crimini! _Crimini!_" "Look at his chest, and his back!" Cis advised. The cowboy lifted Johnnie forward in the morris chair, and held away the big shirt from breast and shoulders. What he saw brought him upright like a pistol shot, his face suddenly scarlet, his mustache whipping up and down, and that eye of his glowering at the longshoreman ferociously. "Caesar Augustus, Philobustus, Hennery Clay!" he burst out. "Bla-a-ack a-a-and _blu-u-ue_!" "And, oh, listen what _else_ he did!" Cis went on. "The uniform you gave to Johnnie----" "Yas?" "_He put it in the stove!_" One-Eye stared. "He put it in the _stove_?" he repeated, but as if this really was quite beyond belief. "My--my scout suit," added Johnnie, who was too worn out to weep. "The priceless brute!" announced Father Pat. "Yes, and all of Johnnie's books, he burned them, too," Cis added. But One-Eye's mind dwelt upon the uniform. "He put it in the stove!" he drawled. "That khaki outfit I give t' the boy! He burned it! And it fresh outen the store!" "The medal, too, One-Eye! Johnnie's father's medal! It was in the coat. So all that's left is the shoes!" "All that's left is the shoes," growled One-Eye. "He burned the hat, and the coat, and--and all. After I'd paid good money fer 'em! The _gall_! The _cheek_! The _impydence_!" He drew a prodigious breath. "Go ahead! Sing about it!" taunted Barber.