plendid, and whose skies were to be rocked and rent
by the thunders of men struggling with reluctant nature, monkeying with
powder.

When Pete laid down his tools and guns on the table at Scarecrow
Charlie's, where the woman was employed, had he in his heart some
foreshadowing presentiment of the peril he was in, of the sharp
destroying fire of a resolute woman's eyes, which he was subjecting
himself to, in including her in his universal caress? Who knows? Perhaps
his flute had whispered tidings to him. He was, said Papa Isbister,
immensely proud of his plaything, this huge gaunt sailor, who had been
bent into the shape of a rainbow--the foot of a rainbow--by a chance
shot, which shattered his hip and gave him an impressive forward cant,
which appeared to women, it seemed--I quote my old friend--in the light
of an endearing droop.

The romantic visitation of this musical sailorman made the efforts of
all Mushrat as nothing. But Rainbow Pete seemed unaware of the fiery
jealousies glowing in the night on all sides of him when he fixed his
eyes on her for the first time--with that mellow assurance of a careless
master of the hearts and whims of women.

"What's this he said to her?" said our old friend. "It was skilful; it
was put like a notable question if she took it so."

"You don't want to go out to-night," he said to her, with his guns on
the table.

"No, I do not," she said to the man.

"There you will be taking the words out of my mouth to suit your heart,"
he went on saying to her. "Mark this, I'm making this a command to you.
You don't want to go out to-night. Do not do it."

This he told her was on account of stray bullets, because he was meaning
to shoot up that place.

Heh! It was a trick of his, to trap her into denying him when he had
made no offer.

Old Isbister laughed heartily at this picture of Pete in the days of his
triumph.

He was a captivating man, it appeared. He was tattooed. On his arms were
snakes and the like of that, daggers and the like of that, dragons and
the like of that. This was a romantic skin to the man; and his blue
eyes were like the diamond drills they were bringing to Mushrat.

"Oh my," said the woman, leaning at his table, "this is what will be
keeping me from mass, I shouldn't wonder."

This was a prairie woman from Regina; now mark, it was whispered to be
no credit to human nature that she had had to leave that town. No. She
was a full woman, very deep, with burnin