ef he tries to marry
that angel. I don't want to marry her. I aint fit, mister, that's a fack.
Ef I was, I'd put in fer her. But I aint. And ef she marries a gentleman,
I haint got not a bit of right to object. But looky hyer! Devils haint
got no right to angels. Ef I kin finish up a devil jest about the time
he gits his claws onto a angel and let the angel go free, why, I say it's
wuth the doin'. Hey?"

Charlton, I am ashamed to say, did not at first think the death of Smith
Westcott by violence a very great crime or calamity, if it served to save
Katy. However, as he walked and talked with Gray, the thought of murder
made him shudder, and he made an earnest effort to persuade the
Inhabitant to give up his criminal thoughts. But it is the misfortune of
people like George Gray that the romance in their composition will get
into their lives. They have not mental discipline enough to make the
distinction between the world of sentiment and the world of action, in
which inflexible conditions modify the purpose.

"Ef I hev to hang fer it I'll hang, but I'm goin' to be her
gardeen angel."

"I didn't know that guardian angels carried pistols," said Albert, trying
to laugh the half-crazed fellow out of a conceit from which he could not
drive him by argument.

"Looky hyer, Mr. Charlton," said Gray, coloring, "I thought you was a
gentleman, and wouldn' stoop to make no sech a remark. Ef you're goin' to
talk that-a-way, you and me don't travel no furder on the same trail. The
road forks right here, mister."

"Oh! I hope not, my dear friend. I didn't mean any offense. Give me your
hand, and God bless you for your noble heart."

Gray was touched as easily one way as the other, and he took Charlton's
hand with emotion, at the same time drawing his sleeve across his eyes
and saying, "God bless you, Mr. Charlton. You can depend on me. I'm the
gardeen, and I don't keer two cents fer life. It's a shadder, and a
mush-room, as I writ some varses about it wonst. Let me say 'em over:

"Life's a shadder,
Never mind it.
A cloud kivers up the sun
And whar is yer shadder gone?
Ye'll hey to be peart to find it!

"Life's a ladder--
What about it?
You've clim half-way t' the top,
Down comes yer ladder ke-whop!
You can't scrabble up without it!

"Nothin's no sadder,
Kordin to my tell,
Than packin' yer life around.
They's good rest under the ground
Ef a feller kin on'y die well."

Charlton, full of ambition, having not