eyed little man tried
to get back into the house, but the great big giant had been too long a
patient and uncomplaining sufferer to let him escape now, and he reached
for his queue, and drew him forth as a showman does a black snake from a
cage.

The Widow saw the great hairy face of this grizzly giant, and retreated
far back into the cabin. She was certain she was terribly afraid of this
great big awkward half-clad exasperated man, and therefore, with a
woman's consistency, she came to the door, and in a voice softer than
running water to Sandy's ears, asked what could be the matter?

Sandy was taken by surprise, and could not say a word. He only rolled
his great head from one shoulder to the other, got his hands lashed up
somehow in his leather belt, and stood there sadly embarrassed.

But who ever saw an embarrassed Chinaman? The innocent little fellow,
turning his soft brown almond eyes up to the Widow, told her, as poor
Sandy stared on straight down the hill, that this dreadful "Amelikan"
wanted him to leave her, and to go home with him, to be his wife.

When Sandy heard this last he disappeared, crestfallen and utterly
crushed. He went home; but not to rest. He told Limber Tim all about
what had happened. How he had stood it all in silence, till it came to
the last shirt. How the Chinaman had lied, and how he was now certain
that it was this same little celestial who had been robbing him. Limber
Tim raised himself on his elbow where he lay in his bunk, and looking
at Sandy, struck out emphatically with his hand, and cried--

"Lay fur him!"

Sandy drew on his great gum boots again. Limber Tim rose up, and then
the two men kept creaking, and screeching and whetting their great boots
together, as they went, without speaking, and in single file down the
hill towards town.

There was an expression of ineffable peace and tranquility on the face
of Washee-Washee that twilight, as he wended his way from the Widow's
cabin to his own. His day's work was done; and the little man's face
looked the soul of repose. Possibly he was saying with the great good
poet, whose lines you hear at evening time, on the lips of nearly every
English artisan--

"Something attempted, something done,
Has earn'd a night's repose."

Washee-Washee looked strangely fat for a Chinaman, as he peacefully
toddled down the trail, still wearing, as he neared his cabin, that look
of calm delight and perfect innocence, such only as the p