r in the quarters where he
did business, and 's I wasn't aching to have any Chinese tong man hit me
over the head with any hatchet by mistake in a shaded wood, I just
naturally fell out of step and lost him, and being some trailer myself,
I took to trailing whoever it was 'd been trailing me and Durks, and by
and by I come up behind him, and when I do I grip him where he won't
make too much noise nor do me too much harm till I let him. He wasn't a
very big chap, nor any too strong, and I sets him down on the nearest
old tree trunk and--'What is it?' I asks.

"He looks at me and shakes his head and says, 'No sabby,' and I looks at
him and I shakes my head and says: 'Oh, yes, you do, Johnnie Sing. I
wasn't wearing any whiskers when I used to meet you in Wall-Eye Bunsen's
place. I've cultivated them for protective purposes only, to hide my
face but not my intelligence--so you just overlook them and try and
recollect Alec Corning. Now what d' y' say?'

"'Halloo, Captain Corning!' he says; and, no pretending, he was glad to
see me.

"'Whitely,' I says--'Bill Whitely when you say it out loud. What's your
trouble, Johnnie?' And so you c'n all get it right, I ought to say first
that Johnnie Sing was a sort of Americanized Chinaman, who the last time
I'd seen him was inquiring if he couldn't become a real American some
way. He'd been born in Lima on the West Coast, where there's a big
colony o' Chinamen, and he was part Chinese, the rest of him Peruvian
Indian. A Christian, too, he was; which I'm not putting up as being for
or against him, except so you'll see he had as much right to be a
Christian as anything else. His mother was Christian, and so it wasn't
like as if he had turned against his own to get on in the world.

"Johnnie was a good sort, and he'd made a few dollars in the tea
business, and so maybe ought to 'a' been happy. But he wasn't. There
was an old Chinaman, and not too old either, who'd married a Finn woman
came off a wrecked Norwegian bark. They ran a laundry together, and
by'n'by they came on to Frisco and ran a laundry there. And Johnnie
followed them. A good woman, and she died leaving a well-grown little
girl, and by'n'by the old fellow he figures he's made enough and goes
back to have a look at China. But no sooner there than he learns he
won't live very long, and he writes Johnnie of it, or maybe it was the
girl did, her and Johnnie having been always about three-quarters in
love with each other. And