"If he dies while bound to me, I'll arrange _that_."

"One dollah an' a half," resumed the sheriff, and falling into the tone
of a facile auctioneer he rattled on:--

"One dollah an' a half foh ole Sol'mon--sol, sol, sol,--do, re, mi, fa,
sol,--do, re, mi, fa, sol! Why, gentlemen, you can set the king
to music!"

All this time the vagrant had stood in the centre of that close ring of
jeering and humorous bystanders--a baffling text from which to have
preached a sermon on the infirmities of our imperfect humanity. Some
years before, perhaps as a master-stroke of derision, there had been
given to him that title which could but heighten the contrast of his
personality and estate with every suggestion of the ancient sacred
magnificence; and never had the mockery seemed so fine as at this
moment, when he was led forth into the streets to receive the lowest
sentence of the law upon his poverty and dissolute idleness. He was
apparently in the very prime of life--a striking figure, for nature at
least had truly done some royal work on him. Over six feet in height,
erect, with limbs well shaped and sinewy, with chest and neck full of
the lines of great power, a large head thickly covered with long,
reddish hair, eyes blue, face beardless, complexion fair but discolored
by low passions and excesses--such was old King Solomon. He wore a
stiff, high, black Castor hat of the period, with the crown smashed in
and the torn rim hanging down over one ear; a black cloth coat in the
old style, ragged and buttonless; a white cotton shirt, with the broad
collar crumpled wide open at the neck and down his sunburnt bosom; blue
jean pantaloons, patched at the seat and the knees; and ragged cotton
socks that fell down over the tops of his dusty shoes, which were open
at the heels.

In one corner of his sensual mouth rested the stump of a cigar. Once
during the proceedings he had produced another, lighted it, and
continued quietly smoking. If he took to himself any shame as the
central figure of this ignoble performance, no one knew it. There was
something almost royal in his unconcern. The humor, the badinage, the
open contempt, of which he was the public target, fell thick and fast
upon him, but as harmlessly as would balls of pith upon a coat of mail.
In truth, there was that in his great, lazy, gentle, good-humored bulk
and bearing which made the gibes seem all but despicable. He shuffled
from one foot to the other as though he found