m."

It was carbolic acid. He had a carboy of it. He sprinkled it all around
everywhere; in fact he drenched everything with it, rifle-box, cheese
and all. Then we sat down, feeling pretty hopeful. But it wasn't for
long. You see the two perfumes began to mix, and then--well, pretty soon
we made a break for the door; and out there Thompson swabbed his face
with his bandanna and said in a kind of disheartened way,

"It ain't no use. We can't buck agin him. He just utilizes everything we
put up to modify him with, and gives it his own flavor and plays it back
on us. Why, Cap., don't you know, it's as much as a hundred times worse
in there now than it was when he first got a-going. I never did see one
of 'em warm up to his work so, and take such a dumnation interest in it.
No, Sir, I never did, as long as I've ben on the road; and I've carried
a many a one of 'em, as I was telling you."

We went in again after we were frozen pretty stiff; but my, we couldn't
stay in, now. So we just waltzed back and forth, freezing, and thawing,
and stifling, by turns. In about an hour we stopped at another station;
and as we left it Thompson came in with a bag, and said,--

"Cap., I'm a-going to chance him once more,--just this once; and if we
don't fetch him this time, the thing for us to do, is to just throw up
the sponge and withdraw from the canvass. That's the way I put it up."
He had brought a lot of chicken feathers, and dried apples, and leaf
tobacco, and rags, and old shoes, and sulphur, and asafoetida, and one
thing or another; and he, piled them on a breadth of sheet iron in the
middle of the floor, and set fire to them.

When they got well started, I couldn't see, myself, how even the corpse
could stand it. All that went before was just simply poetry to that
smell,--but mind you, the original smell stood up out of it just as
sublime as ever,--fact is, these other smells just seemed to give it a
better hold; and my, how rich it was! I didn't make these reflections
there--there wasn't time--made them on the platform. And breaking for
the platform, Thompson got suffocated and fell; and before I got him
dragged out, which I did by the collar, I was mighty near gone myself.
When we revived, Thompson said dejectedly,--

"We got to stay out here, Cap. We got to do it. They ain't no other way.
The Governor wants to travel alone, and he's fixed so he can outvote
us."

And presently he added,

"And don't you know, we're pisoned