treacherous skids of their temptation and
over the citadel walls to bask among the chosen in a Jericho City of
repentance. Proselytes from other and hostile creeds trooped over with
hosannas and loud outcries of rejoicing. Even the place where, each
evening, the triumph of the preceding evening was repeated and amplified
seemed appropriate for such scenes. For the Twelfth Ward tabernacle had
not always been a tabernacle; it had been a tobacco-warehouse--but it
was converted. And its present chief ornament, next only to the Sin
Killer himself--indeed, its chiefest ornament of all in the estimation
of impressionable younger unmarried female members--was Prof. Cephus
Fringe.

At thought of him and of this, Jeff Poindexter, reperched on his wabbly
piggin, wove his furrowed brow into a closer and more intricate pattern
of cordial dislike. For if the main reason of his unhappiness was
Ophelia Stubblefield, the secondary reason and principal contributory
cause was this same Cephus Fringe. Ophelia's favorite letter may not
have been F, but it should have been. She was fair, fickle, fawn-toned,
flirty, flighty, and frequently false. Jeff cast back in his mind. He
certainly had had his troubles since he became permanently engaged to
Ophelia. For instance, there had been her affair with that ferocious
razor-wielder Smooth Crumbaugh. In this matter the fortuitous return
from the dead of Red Hoss Shackleford, as skilfully engineered by Jeff,
had broken up Red Hoss's own memorial services, had also operated to
scare Smooth Crumbaugh clean out of Colored Odd Fellows' Hall and leave
the fainting Ophelia in the rescuing arms of Jeff. But there had been
half a dozen other affairs, each of such intensity as temporarily to
undermine Jeff's peace of mind. Between spells of infatuations for
attractive strangers, she accepted Jeff's devotions. The trouble was,
though, that life, with Ophelia, seemed to be just one infatuation after
another. And now, to cap all, she had suffered herself, nay, offered
herself, to fall thrall to the dashing personality and the varied
accomplishments of this Fringe person. It was this entanglement which
for two weeks past had made Jeff, her official 'tween-times fiance, a
prey to carking cares and dark forebodings.

Hourly and daily the situation, from Jeff's point of view, had grown
more desperate as Ophelia's passion for the fascinating sojourner grew.
He had even lost his relish for victuals which, with Jeff,