and his right eye half "bunged up."

"Why, William," says Ethan Rakestraw, as Bill went into the store, "what
in grace ails thy face? Thee looks like an owl in an ivy-bush!"

"Been plugged and filed," says Bill, looking cross as a meat-axe at his
snickering Orthodox boss.

"Plugged and _fined_? Thee hain't been fighting, William?"

"Fined? No, I ain't been _fined_ or fighting, Mr. Rakestraw, but I bet I
do fight that feller who gave me the tooth-ache!--O! O!" moaned poor
Bill, as he clamped his swollen jaw with his hand, and went around
waving his head like a plaster-of-paris mandarin.

"O! thee's been to the dentist, eh? Got the tooth-ache? Go thee to my
wife; she'll cure thee in one minute, William; a little laudanum and
cotton will soon ease thy pain."

Mrs. Rakestraw applied the laudanum to Bill's molar, but as it did no
kind of good, old grandmother proposed a poultice; and soon poor Bill's
head and cheek were done up in mush, while he groaned and grunted and
started for the store, every body gaping at his swollen countenance as
though he was a rare curiosity.

"Halloo, Bill!" says old Firelock, the gunsmith, as Bill was going by
his shop; "got a bag in your calabash, or got the tooth-ache?"

Bill looked daggers at old Firelock, and by a nod of his head intimated
the cause of his distress.

"O, that all? Come in; I'll stop it in a minute and a half; sit down,
I'll fix it--I've cured hundreds," says Firelock.

"What are you--O-h-h, dear! what are you going to do?" says Bill, eyeing
the wire, and lamp in which Firelock was heating the wire.

"Burn out the marrow of the tooth--'twill never trouble you again--I've
cured hundreds that way! Don't be afeared--you won't feel it but a
moment. Sit still, keep cool!" says Firelock.

"Cool?" with a hot wire in his tooth! But Bill, being already intensely
crucified, and assured of Firelock's skill, took his head out of the
mush-plaster, opened his jaws, and Firelock, admonishing him to "keep
cool," crowded the hot, sizzling wire on to the tin foil jammed into the
hollow by Wangbanger, and gave it a twist clear through the melted tin
to the exposed nerve. Bill jumped, bit off the wire, burnt his tongue,
and knocked Firelock nearly through the partition of his shop; and so
frightened Monsieur Savon, the little barber next door, that he rushed
out into the street, crying--

"Mon Dieu! mon Dieu! Ze zundair strike my shop!"

Bill was stone dead--Firelock crippled. Th