r.

The climax had been forced, and, it must be confessed, was by no means
the one Mr. Wynn had fully arranged in his own inner consciousness.
He had intended to take an ostentatious leave of Low in the bar-room,
deliver the letter with archness, and escape before a possible
explosion. He consequently backed towards the door for an emergency.
But he was again at fault. That unaffected stoical fortitude in acute
suffering, which was the one remaining pride and glory of Low's race,
was yet to be revealed to Wynn's civilized eyes.

The young man took the letter, and read it without changing a muscle,
folded the ring in it, and dropped it into his haversack. Then he picked
up his blanket, threw it over his shoulder, took his trusty rifle in his
hand, and turned towards Wynn as if coldly surprised that he was still
standing there.

"Are you--are you--going?" stammered Wynn.

"Are you NOT?" replied Low dryly, leaning on his rifle for a moment as
if waiting for Wynn to precede him. The preacher looked at him a moment,
mumbled something, and then shambled feebly and ineffectively down the
staircase before Low, with a painful suggestion to the ordinary observer
of being occasionally urged thereto by the moccasin of the young man
behind him.

On reaching the lower hall, however, he endeavored to create a diversion
in his favor by dashing into the bar-room and clapping the occupants on
the back with indiscriminate playfulness. But here again he seemed to be
disappointed. To his great discomfiture, a large man not only returned
his salutation with powerful levity, but with equal playfulness seized
him in his arms, and after an ingenious simulation of depositing him
in the horse-trough set him down in affected amazement. "Bleth't if
I didn't think from the weight of your hand it wath my old friend,
Thacramento Bill," said Curson apologetically, with a wink at the
bystanders. "That'th the way Bill alwayth uthed to tackle hith friendth,
till he wath one day bounthed by a prithe-fighter in Frithco, whom he
had mithtaken for a mithionary." As Mr. Curson's reputation was of a
quality that made any form of apology from him instantly acceptable,
the amused spectators made way for him as, recognizing Low, who was just
leaving the hotel, he turned coolly from them and walked towards him.

"Halloo!" he said, extending his hand. "You're the man I'm waiting for.
Did you get a book from the exthpreth offithe latht night?"

"I did. Why?"