be avenged!" And he
sure done it.

He didn't believe in none o' your cheap little killin's. He gives 'em
all the range they wanted while he was fixin' up the cards; but when he
was ready to call their hands, the' was somethin' doin' every minute,
an' don't you never forget it. Oh, he was a deep one. It is creepy to
think of any one like him bein' turned loose on the earth, 'cause a
feller might do somethin' 'at didn't suit him, an' the' wasn't no place
you could hide in afterward. He kept watchin' all the while, an' nobody
couldn't commit a crime nowheres on earth but what he knew of it, an'
he'd go an' call the feller over to one side an' say, "Young man, you
are doomed to die; but if you'll promise to do anything I want you to,
I'll give the Pope, or the Emp'rer of Chinee, or whoever the main stem
happened to be, a scuttle o' diamonds an' get you free--what's the
word?"

Well, in a few years the' wasn't half a dozen criminals in the whole
world who wasn't bound to carry out his orders, an' you can see what an
outfit he had to back him up. Some of 'em he'd make his body-servants;
but that wasn't no snap, you can bet, 'cause he was notionable to a
degree. He'd make plans for a little party, an' he'd send one man to
Siberia for a fish, an' another to Asia for a fowl, an' another to
Chinee for a bird's nest--to make soup of--an' so on. He never give his
guests nothin' to eat 'at growed in the same country the feast was to
be give in. Then he'd say to his steward, who had the hardest job of
all, "Bill"--Bill wasn't his name, but it'll do--"Bill, where did I see
that six-foot vase, made out of a single ruby?"

An' Bill would turn pale an' say, "It was in the secret vault of the
Em'prer of Chince, your Excellency." Then Monte Cristo, he'd say, "Ah,
yes, so it was. 'Tell, go an' get it an' have it here by the
twenty-fifth day of next month."

Well, Bill, he'd just about flicker out, an' begin to tell how it
couldn't be did; but Xlonte, he'd only look at him cold, an' say,
"Never mind the details, Bill--get the vase. If you think you need the
British Navy, why, buy it, but don't bother me. It seems to me, Bill,
'at you ought to begin gittin' on to my curves purty soon. Good-bye."

This was the way he carried on. He'd go to a prison an' he'd say,
"Young man, you was buried to death when you was a baby, but I figgered
I could use you later on, so I had you transplanted. You come out o'
this prison, get an edication, an' on