“‘Hooppitty Hoppitty Hippitty Yer-hoop!’ says he. ‘That’s just what she’s done! I’m three days out. Not a smell of smoke in three days! My soul has gone away and won’t have any more truck with me. I don’t know who I am, nor why. I’ve been trying for an hour to find out how much three and two make. Take your money and leave me to my fate.’ “With this picture in my mind I broke for town. Half-way there I was chawin’ a latigo-strap like a wolf. When I hit the street, I jumped through the drug-store door. “‘What you got for a man that’s quit chewin’?’ I gasps to the boss. “‘Franky Frenchman’s Fool-Killer,’ says he--and with that he turns his head and expectorates satisfactorily into the spittoon. “Seeing him, I near died of a broken heart. “‘The next crack will be at your expense,’ I told him. ‘You hike out somethin’ for my case,’ I says. He shoved me out a package, just like that.” Mr. Scraggs poked my gift. “Just like that. I put the whole bizzee in my trap and chomped on it like a lion. I walked around the town, chompin’ on it. I waved my jaws till my face ached. Seemed to me like I’d never done anythin’ in all my life but bite Injy-rubber. And then I pushed madly for the first stud-poker game. “When I got there, nothin’ was movin’. This here tin-horn I mention was polishing his muss-tache with both hands, whilst he talked to a few hangers-on. “I became ashamed of that choon’-gum and I stuck it under the table, very sly and surreptishus. I felt like a man again. “‘Fire the engine up!’ says I. ‘Gimme five stacks to practise on.’ “The gam hopped gleeful toward the table and give the drawer a yank. She stuck. He cussed and pulled harder. She came open with a jerk and a kind of a long, sticky s-m-aaa-ack, followed the strings of gray. “The gam arose from where he’d sot on his backbone and looked at the drawer. “‘We’re not doin’ any business to-day,’ says he, showing me my little eagle-bird. “‘What’s happened to the trade?’ says I. “He simply p’inted to the hunk of gum (which I had most unforchinit jammed ag’in’ the drawer). “‘My wildest fancies have got exceeded,’ says he. ‘Do you want to hear a weird and wilful tale of woe?’ “‘Of course not,’ I says. “‘All right,’ says he. ‘I’ll tell you.’ “‘Well,’ says he, ‘here’s the way she come up. I’m a lost one in the wilderness out at a telegraph station. I see where I get my talents buried in a napkin made of sole-leather, hence I get handy with a deck of cards in front of the lookin’-glass. My work is so good after a while that I lose my whole salary to myself, and yet watchin’ careful all the time in the lookin’-glass. I’m fit to handle the steamboat trade, but I aims higher: I buy me a ticket to Noo York and hunt up a place where they hew to the line, let the chips fall where they will. “‘“What’s your noo box o’ tricks?” says the Murphy that run the joint. “‘“Well,” says I, “nothin’ new, but the good old reliable line. The world is my oyster, as Hamlet says, and I’ve got openers.”