d started to say something about an
outrage.

"Oh, that's all right, your majesty," says Brown. "Hi, Chianti, come
here a minute! Here's your old college chum, the count, been and put his
foot in it."

When the new barber showed up the count never made another move, just
wilted like a morning-glory after sunrise. But you never see a worse
upset man than Ebenezer Dillaway.

"But what does this mean?" says he, kind of wild like. "Why don't you
take that thing off his foot?"

"Oh," says Peter, "he's been elongating my pedal extremity for the last
month or so; I don't see why I should kick if he pulls his own for a
while. You see," he says, "it's this way:

"Ever since his grace condescended to lend the glory of his countenance
to this humble roof," he says, "it's stuck in my mind that I'd seen the
said countenance somewhere before. The other night when our conversation
was trifling with the razor subject and the Grand Lama here"--that's the
name he called the count--"was throwing in details about his carving his
friends, it flashed across me where I'd seen it. About a couple of years
ago I was selling the guileless rural druggists contiguous to Scranton,
Pennsylvania, the tasty and happy combination called 'Dr. Bulger's
Electric Liver Cure,' the same being a sort of electric light for shady
livers, so to speak. I made my headquarters at Scranton, and, while
there, my hair was shortened and my chin smoothed in a neat but gaudy
barber shop, presided over by my friend Spaghetti here, and my equally
valued friend the count."

"So," says Peter, smiling and cool as ever, "when it all came back
to me, as the song says, I journeyed to Scranton accompanied by a
photograph of his lordship. I was lucky enough to find Macaroni in the
same old shop. He knew the count's classic profile at once. It seems his
majesty had hit up the lottery a short time previous for a few hundred
and had given up barbering. I suppose he'd read in the papers that the
imitation count line was stylish and profitable and so he tried it on.
It may be," says Brown, offhand, "that he thought he might marry some
rich girl. There's some fool fathers, judging by the papers, that are
willing to sell their daughters for the proper kind of tag on a package
like him."

Old man Dillaway kind of made a face, as if he'd ate something that
tasted bad, but he didn't speak.

"And so," says Peter, "Spaghetti and I came to the Old Home together,
he to shave for twelv