s I gave him--right
around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of 'em. He
won't bother you no more."

"This--is--King--James--you speak--of?" asked old man Ellison, while
he sipped his coffee.

"You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the
witnesses what saw him draw his gun first was all there. Well, of
course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but
there was four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He
won't bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to have seen how close
them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as
I do must kind of limber a fellow's trigger finger up a little, don't
you think, Uncle Ben?"

Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the
spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was cooking.

"Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a
tremulous hand, "would you mind getting the guitar and playing that
'_Huile, huile, palomita_' piece once or twice? It always seems to be
kind of soothing and comforting when a man's tired and fagged out."

There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is
wrong. It should have been called "The Last of the Barons." There
never will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem
that the jingle of their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled
blows of the pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers in the
world.

II

THE SLEUTHS

In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and
completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out. All the
agencies of inquisition--the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the
city's labyrinths, the closet detectives of theory and induction--will
be invoked to the search. Most often the man's face will be seen no
more. Sometimes he will reappear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre
Haute, calling himself one of the synonyms of "Smith," and without
memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer's bill.
Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the
restaurants to see if he may be waiting for a well-done sirloin, that
he has moved next door.

This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man
from a blackboard is one of the most impressive themes in dramaturgy.

The case of Mary Snyder, in point, should not be without interest.

A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to