sleepily.

"What's the matter, Sam? What noise? Oh, I guess that is one of those
death-ticks; they don't like the light. Maybe it will stop in a minute."

It usually did stop about that time, and the reading would be apt to
continue. But no sooner was there stillness than it began again--tick,
tick, tick. With a wild explosion of blasphemy, the book would go across
the floor and the light would disappear. Sometimes, when he couldn't
sleep, he would dress and walk out in the street for an hour, while the
cruel Steve slept like the criminal that he was.

At last, one night, he overdid the thing and was caught. His tortured
room-mate at first reviled him, then threatened to kill him, finally put
him to shame. It was curious, but they always loved each other, those
two; there was never anything resembling an estrangement, and to
his last days Mark Twain never could speak of Steve Gillis without
tenderness.

They moved a great many times in San Francisco. Their most satisfactory
residence was on a bluff on California Street. Their windows looked down
on a lot of Chinese houses--"tin-can houses," they were called--small
wooden shanties covered with beaten-out cans. Steve and Mark would look
down on these houses, waiting until all the Chinamen were inside; then
one of them would grab an empty beer-bottle, throw it down on those tin
can roofs, and dodge behind the blinds. The Chinamen would swarm out
and look up at the row of houses on the edge of the bluff, shake their
fists, and pour out Chinese vituperation. By and by, when they had
retired and everything was quiet again, their tormentors would throw
another bottle. This was their Sunday amusement.

At a place on Minna Street they lived with a private family. At first
Clemens was delighted.

"Just look at it, Steve," he said. "What a nice, quiet place. Not a
thing to disturb us."

But next morning a dog began to howl. Gillis woke this time, to find
his room-mate standing in the door that opened out into a back garden,
holding a big revolver, his hand shaking with cold and excitement.

"Came here, Steve," he said. "Come here and kill him. I'm so chilled
through I can't get a bead on him."

"Sam," said Steve, "don't shoot him. Just swear at him. You can easily
kill him at that range with your profanity."

Steve Gillis declares that Mark Twain then let go such a scorching,
singeing blast that the brute's owner sold him next day for a Mexican
hairless dog.

We gath