tural intellect and native
refinement. He stood up and smoothed back his hair on each side with
his hands as you have seen little girls do when they play.

"'Get behind me, both of you,' says Henry.

"'What's it to be, chief?' I asked.

"'I'm going to buck centre,' says Henry, in his football idioms.
'There isn't a tackle in the lot of them. Follow me close, and rush
the game.'

"Then that cultured Red Man exhaled an arrangement of sounds with
his mouth that made the Latin aggregation pause, with thoughtfulness
and hesitations. The matter of his proclamation seemed to be a
co-operation of the Carlisle war-whoop with the Cherokee college
yell. He went at the chocolate team like a bean out of a little boy's
nigger shooter. His right elbow laid out the governor man on the
gridiron, and he made a lane the length of the crowd so wide that a
woman could have carried a step-ladder through it without striking
against anything. All Mellinger and me had to do was to follow.

"It took us just three minutes to get out of that street around to
military headquarters, where Mellinger had things his own way. A
colonel and a battalion of bare-toed infantry turned out and went
back to the scene of the musicale with us, but the conspirator gang
was gone. But we recaptured the phonograph with honours of war, and
marched back to the _cuartel_ with it playing 'All Coons Look Alike
to Me.'

"The next day Mellinger takes me and Henry to one side, and begins to
shed tens and twenties.

"'I want to buy that phonograph,' says he. 'I liked that last tune it
played at the _soiree_.'

"'This is more money than the machine is worth,' says I.

"''Tis government expense money,' says Mellinger. 'The government
pays for it, and it's getting the tune-grinder cheap.'

"Me and Henry knew that pretty well. We knew that it had saved Homer
P. Mellinger's graft when he was on the point of losing it; but we
never let him know we knew it.

"'Now you boys better slide off further down the coast for a while,'
says Mellinger, 'till I get the screws put on these fellows here. If
you don't they'll give you trouble. And if you ever happen to see
Billy Renfrew again before I do, tell him I'm coming back to New York
as soon as I can make a stake--honest.'

"Me and Henry laid low until the day the steamer came back. When we
saw the captain's boat on the beach we went down and stood in the
edge of the water. The captain grinned when he saw us.

"'I told y