arded his boots on the other arm-chair for a few moments
in profound meditation. "There was a sort o' gaudy insect," he began
presently, "suthin' halfway betwixt a boss-fly and a devil's
darnin'-needle, ez crawled up onter the box seat with me last week, and
buzzed! Now I think on it, he talked high-faluten' o' the inflooence
of the press and sech. I may hev said 'shoo' to him when he was
hummin' the loudest. I mout hev flicked him off oncet or twicet with
my whip. It must be him. Gosh!" he said suddenly, rising and lifting
his heavy hand to his forehead, "now I think agin he was the feller ez
crawled under the desk when the fight was goin' on, and stayed there.
Yes, sir, that was HIM. His face looked sorter familiar, but I didn't
know him moultin' with his feathers off." He turned upon me with the
first expression of trouble and anxiety I had ever seen him wear.
"Yes, sir, that's him. And I've kem--me, Yuba Bill!--kem MYSELF, a
matter of twenty miles, totin' a GUN--a gun, by Gosh!--to fight
that--that--that potatar-bug!" He walked to the window, turned, walked
back again, finished his whiskey with a single gulp, and laid his hand
almost despondingly on my shoulder. "Look ye, old--old fell, you and
me's ole friends. Don't give me away. Don't let on a word o' this to
any one! Say I kem down yer howlin' drunk on a gen'ral tear! Say I
mistook that newspaper office for a cigar-shop, and--got licked by the
boss! Say anythin' you like, 'cept that I took a gun down yer to chase
a fly that had settled onter me. Keep the Left Bower in yer back
office till I send for it. Ef you've got a back door somewhere handy
where I can slip outer this without bein' seen I'd be thankful."

As this desponding suggestion appeared to me as the wisest thing for
him to do in the then threatening state of affairs outside,--which, had
he suspected it, he would have stayed to face,--I quickly opened a door
into a courtyard that communicated through an alley with a side street.
Here we shook hands and parted; his last dejected ejaculation being,
"That potatobug!" Later I ascertained that Captain Jim had retired to
his ranch some four miles distant. He was not seriously hurt, but
looked, to use the words of my informant, "ez ef he'd been hugged by a
playful b'ar." As the "Guardian" made its appearance the next week
without the slightest allusion to the fracas, I did not deem it
necessary to divulge the real facts. When I called to in