alarmed. And Mr.
Gamboni's out there, and he'll not see bloodshed!"

"_I_ don't worry!" boasted Johnnie. "Cis, what makes y' talk the way y'
do? Barber, _he_ can't lick a _cowboy_!"

"Y' pesky critter!"--this from the hall, in unmistakable westernese.

"Y' hear?" joyously demanded Johnnie, recognizing One-Eye's voice. "Y'
hear, Father Pat? Oh, I don't have t' look! I know how it's goin'! I can
_see_ it! One-Eye's got him down! He's hammerin' him good!--Oh, go for
him, One-Eye! Go for him! _Go_ for him!"

Slap! slap! slap!

To judge from these sounds, the cowboy was carrying out Johnnie's wish.
So with that rapt look, and that moving of the nostrils which betokened
excited day-dreaming, Johnnie gladdened himself with a soul-satisfying
picture of the contest: Big Tom prone on his face, spent, helpless,
cowering, pleading, bleeding, while the dashing One-Eye rained blow
after blow upon him--bing! bing! bing! ("Makin' a meal outen him," as
the man from the West would say). Next, he saw the longshoreman
stretched upon a bed of pain, admitting all of his shortcomings to
Father Pat in weak whispers.

It was all so real to Johnnie that he fell to pitying Big Tom!

He pitied him more as the scene changed swiftly to that of a funeral
(Barber's, of course), at which he--Johnnie--in a new suit, with Cis
beside him, made one carriageful in an extended line of carriages, all
rolling circumspectly along. That One-Eye's plight, under such
circumstances, might be trying, to say the least, Johnnie forgot to
consider, wholly passing over the small matter of an inquiry on the part
of the police authorities! What he did anticipate, however, was a flat
that, in the future, would be a peaceful, happy, quiet place--the home
of just Grandpa, Cis, and himself.

"Oh, Father Pat, by now One-Eye's dead!" wailed Cis. "Oh, why didn't
some one stop them! Oh! Oh, dear!"

This interruption to Johnnie's visioning was followed by a loud laugh,
and the turning of the hall doorknob. Johnnie raised himself on an
elbow, lifting a hopeful face. "One-Eye!" he cried. "Hooray! Hooray!"

But it was Barber who strode into the room.

He was grinning from one huge, outstanding ear to the other. "Ha! ha!
ha! ha! ha!" he chortled triumphantly. "Guess I'll have t' go t' the
Hospital! Look how I'm all beat up! Ha! ha! ha! ha! ha!"

As he stood laughing, his bristling face split across by the brown line
that was his teeth, his bulging eyes shut with merrimen