es--did the same--and just so sure as one of us axed
him a question, he'd go back to the beginning and till the whole story
over again. He'd begin airly in the evening, and kaap it going till tin
or eleven o'clock. I belave the old gintleman rather liked to have us be
interruptin' him, for he laid bates for us wee ones, and ye see by that
manes one story sometimes kept him going for a waak. Heaven bliss the
owld gintleman--he had a habit of stopping in the middle of an exciting
part and lighting his dudheen, and then when he'd begin again, he'd skip
over a part on purpose to make us ax him a question----"

"Well, Tim, we will talk about your grandfather some other day," said
Howard, who, as naturally may be supposed, was impatient for him to come
to the point.

"Yis, I was just through with him, but yees should never be overmuch in
haste. Me blessed mother always told me that it was the same as being
too slow, and if anybody could spake of the same, could me mother do it.
I was about to obsarve when yees interrupted me, that a man must be
mighty careful in going up to a camp-fire, for these Indians slaap so
quietly that the overturning of a leaf is sure to wake 'em, and you saa
by this, if we'd all three gone up, as we war thinkin' about, they'd
heard us long before we could have got sight of 'em, and our tramping in
Californy would be done with----"

"So they were Indians were they?" asked Elwood again, partly amused and
partly vexed at Tim's persistent dallying with their curiosity.

"Who said the same?"

"You implied it. Were they red or white men? Answer us--yes or no!"

"And that is just the pint I's raching for, as me frind, Michael
O'Shanghangly, said when he took a half-quart of whisky. Yez understands
that I wanted to make sure just who the same might be, and what was
their number. 'Spose, now, I should have come back and said there war
but three of the same, and there should be a half-dozen, or I should say
they was white gintlemen like ourselves, and they should turn out to be
of a darker hue. Ye saas that it wouldn't do."

The boys had become so uneasy by this time that they were walking back
and forth, and talking to each other in low tones.

"I will go forward and see for myself," said Elwood. "I don't care about
waiting an hour or two for him to answer my question."

"He will soon answer us; he is only indulging in a little pleasantry."

"Rather a bad time for jesting."

"I think we can be sur