e window of my
house, and sometimes when I'm walkin' on the street."

"And he ain't ever hit you yet?" asked Philo Gubb.

"Hit me?" exclaimed old Gabe. "Why, he don't ever miss me. He hits me
every time. There ain't a day he don't shoot and hit me, and some days
he hits me two or three times. I dare say I'm almost dead now, if I
knowed it."

Philo Gubb fondled his notebook uncertainly.

"What--what does he shoot you with?" he asked.

"Well, I dunno exactly," said old Gabe. "With a pea-shooter."

Philo Gubb closed his notebook, and slipped it into his pocket.

"If all you was after was to get that two dollars and ten cents, you
might have got it without wastin' so much of my time," he said
reproachfully.

But old Gabe did not move.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"Maybe I'm a fool," Gubb said bitterly, "but I ain't no such fool as
to think anybody is murdering nobody with a pea-shooter."

"Was you ever shot with a cannon?" asked old Gabe calmly.

"No, nor nobody ever tried to murder me with a pea-shooter," said
Philo Gubb.

"If you ever _was_ shot by a thirteen-inch cannon ball," said old
Gabe, "you'd know it. When a thirteen-inch cannon ball hits you, there
ain't nothin' left of you at all. But when a one-inch cannon ball hits
you, you've got a chance to live a minute or two, maybe. That's the
difference between a thirteen-inch cannon ball shootin' you, and a
one-inch cannon ball shootin' you. And a rifle ball is different,
too."

"I got a job of paper-hangin' as soon as I can get away from here,"
said Philo Gubb meaningly.

"You got a job of detectin' on hand now," said old Gabe. "And, as I
was sayin', a rifle ball acts different. Maybe it kills you the first
shot, and maybe you can hold three or four rifle bullets before you
die, but if they keep on shootin' at you, you get killed sooner or
later. Probably five shots is all any man could stand. I guess that's
about it.

[Illustration: "THERE AIN'T A DAY HE DON'T SHOOT AND HIT ME"]

"And then you come down to one of them little twenty-two caliber
revolvers. If he don't hit you in the heart, a murderer could easy
enough shoot at you twenty-five times with one of them little
twenty-two's before he killed you dead. But you'd be dead sooner or
later. It's just a matter of what a man shoots you with that makes the
difference in time.

"Of course," he continued agreeably, "you don't expect no pea-shooter
to kill me as quick as a thirteen-inch gun wo