ure in heart
are supposed to wear. His hands were drawn up and folded calmly across
his obtruding stomach, as if he feared he might possibly burst open, and
wanted to be ready to hold himself together.

In the great-little republic there, where all had begun an even and
equal race in the battle of life, where all had begun as beggars, this
tawny little man from the far-off Flowery Kingdom was alone; he was the
only representative of his innumerable millions in all that camp. And he
did seem so fat, so perfectly full of satisfaction. Perhaps he smiled to
think how fat he was, and, too, how he had flourished in the little
democracy.

He was making a short turn in the trail, still holding his clasped hands
over his extended stomach, still smiling peacefully out of his half-shut
eyes:

"Washee! Washee!"

A double bolt of thunder was in his ears. A tremendous hand reached out
from behind a pine, and then the fat little Chinaman squatted down and
began to wilt and melt beneath it.

"Washee-Washee, come!"

Washee-Washee was not at all willing to come; but that made not the
slightest difference in the world to Sandy. The little almond-eyed man
was not at all heavy. Old flannel shirts, cotton overalls, stockings,
cotton collars and cambric handkerchiefs never are heavy, no matter how
well they may be wadded in, and padded away, and tucked up, and twisted
under an outer garment; and so before he had time to say a word he was
on his way to the Widow's with Sandy, while Limber Tim, with his mouth
half-open, came corkscrewing up the trail, and grinding and whetting his
screechy gum boots together after them.

There is a fine marble statue in the garden at Naples, near the massive
marble head of Virgil, which represents some great giant as striding
along with some little pigmy thrown over his shoulder, which he is
carelessly holding on by the heel. Sandy looked not wholly unlike that
statue, as he strode up the trail with Washee-Washee.

He reached the door of the Widow's cabin, knocked with the knuckles of
his left hand, while his right hand held on to an ankle that hung down
over his left shoulder, and calmly waited an answer.

The door half-way opened.

"Beg pardon, mum."

He bowed stiffly as he said this, and then shifting Washee-Washee round,
quietly took his other heel in his other hand, and proceeded to shake
him up and down, and dance him and stand him gently on his head, until
the clothes began to burst out fr