thirty years before.

"Why, you ain't goin' out again till you've shaken off the water, Joe.
You're dripping like a Newfoundland;" said Captain Rumway, as Chillis
put down his empty glass, and turned toward the door, which he had
entered not five minutes before. This thoughtfulness for his comfort,
however, only meant, "Stay till you've taken another drink, and then
maybe you will tell us a story;" and Chillis knew the bait well enough
to decline it.

"Thankee, Captain. One bucketful more or less won't make no difference.
I'm wet to the skin now. Thank ye all, gentlemen; I've got business to
attend to this evenin'. Have any of you seen Eb Smiley this
arternoon?"--looking back, with his hand on the door-knob. "I'd like to
speak to him afore I leave, ef you can tell me whar to find him."

"You'll find him in there," answered the bar-tender, crooking his thumb
toward a room leading out of the saloon, containing a tumbled single-bed
and a wooden settee, besides various masculine bijouterie in the shape
of boots, old and new, clean and dirty; candle and cigar ends; dusty
bits of paper on a stand, the chief ornament of which was a
black-looking derringer; coats, vests, fishing-tackle; and cheap prints,
adorning the walls in the wildest disregard of effect--except, indeed,
the effect aimed at were chaos.

Into this apartment Chillis unceremoniously thrust himself through the
half-open door, frowning as darkly as his fine and pleasant features
would admit of, and muttering to himself, "Damme, I thought as much."

On the wooden settee reclined a man thirty years his junior--Chillis was
over sixty, though he did not look it--sleeping the heavy, stupid sleep
of intoxication. The old hunter did not stand upon ceremony, nor
hesitate to invade the sleeper's privacy, but marched up to the settee,
his ragged old blanket-coat dripping tiny streams from every separate
tatter, and proceeded at once roughly to arouse the drunken man by a
prolonged and vigorous shaking.

"Wha'er want? Lemme 'lone," grumbled Smiley, only dimly conscious of
what was being said or done to him.

"Get up, I say. Get up, you fool! and come along home. Your wife is
needin' ye. Go home and take care of her and the boy. Come along--d'ye
hear?"

But the sleeper's brain was impervious to sound or sense. He only
muttered, in a drowsy whisper, "Lemme 'lone," a few times, and went off
into a deeper stupor than before.

"You miserable cuss," snarled Chillis, in