nd a wheeze. "Don't bother me now.
I've got 'im. I'm laying f'r the old dog. Whist!"

"Got nothing!" snarled the Colonel. "You try that on if you want to.
Just swing that man in there if you think it's healthy for him. Just as
like as not, you'll slip up on that little trick."

"Ha! Say you so, old True Penny? The Kunnel has met a foeman worthy of
his steel," said Foster, in great glee, as he bent above the Colonel. "I
know. _How_ do I know, quotha? By the curve on the Kunnel's back. The
size of the parabola described by that backbone accurately gauges his
adversary's skill. But, by the way, gentlemen, have you--but that's a
nice point, and I refer all nice points to Professor Knapp. Professor,
is it in good taste to make remarks concerning the dress or features of
another?"

"Certainly not," answered Knapp, a handsome young fellow with a yellow
mustache.

"Not when the person is an esteemed public character, like the Colonel
here? What I was about to remark, if it had been proper, was that the
old fellow is getting wofully bald. He'll soon be bald as an egg."

"Say!" asked the Colonel, "I want to know how long you're going to keep
this thing up? Somebody's dummed sure t' get hurt soon."

"There, there! Colonel," said Brown, soothingly, "don't get excited;
you'll lose the rubber. Don't mind 'em. Keep cool."

"Yes, keep cool, Kunnel; it's only our solicitude for your welfare,"
chipped in Foster. Then, addressing the crowd in a general sort of way,
he speculated: "Curious how a man, a plain American citizen like Colonel
Peavy, wins a place in the innermost affections of a whole people."

"That's so!" murmured the rest.

"He can't grow bald without deep sympathy from his fellow-citizens. It
amounts to a public calamity."

The old Colonel glared in speechless wrath.

"Say! gents," pleaded Gordon, "let up on the old man for the present.
He's going to need all of himself if he gets out o' the trap he's in
now." He waved, his fat hand over the Colonel's head, and smiled blandly
at the crowd hugging the stove.

"My head may be bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin,
indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to skunk any
man in this crowd three games out o' five."

"The ol' man rather gits the laugh on y' there, gents," called Robie
from the other side of the counter. "I hain't seen the old skeesix play
better'n he did last night, in years."

"Not since his return from Canada, after