u, Tommy?"

"No," said the boy.

"Ef I was to ask you," continued Johnson, without heeding the reply, but
with a growing anxiety of eye and a nervous twitching of his lips,--"ef
I was to ask you, fur instance, ef that was a jackass rabbit thet jest
passed,--eh?--you'd say it was or was not, ez the case may be. You
wouldn't play the ole man on thet?"

"No," said Tommy, quietly, "it WAS a jackass rabbit."

"Ef I was to ask you," continued Johnson, "ef it wore, say, fur
instance, a green hat with yaller ribbons, you wouldn't play me, and say
it did, onless,"--he added, with intensified cunning,--"onless it DID?"

"No," said Tommy, "of course I wouldn't; but then, you see, IT DID."

"It did?"

"It did!" repeated Tommy, stoutly; "a green hat with yellow
ribbons--and--and--a red rosette."

"I didn't get to see the ros-ette," said Johnson, with slow and
conscientious deliberation, yet with an evident sense of relief; "but
that ain't sayin' it warn't there, you know. Eh?"

Tommy glanced quietly at his companion. There were great beads of
perspiration on his ashen-gray forehead and on the ends of his lank
hair; the hand which twitched spasmodically in his was cold and clammy,
the other, which was free, had a vague, purposeless, jerky activity, as
if attached to some deranged mechanism. Without any apparent concern in
these phenomena, Tommy halted, and, seating himself on a log, motioned
his companion to a place beside him. Johnson obeyed without a word.
Slight as was the act, perhaps no other incident of their singular
companionship indicated as completely the dominance of this careless,
half-effeminate, but self-possessed boy over this doggedly self-willed,
abnormally excited man.

"It ain't the square thing," said Johnson, after a pause, with a laugh
that was neither mirthful nor musical, and frightened away a lizard that
had been regarding the pair with breathless suspense,--"it ain't the
square thing for jackass rabbits to wear hats, Tommy,--is it, eh?"

"Well," said Tommy, with unmoved composure, "sometimes they do and
sometimes they don't. Animals are mighty queer." And here Tommy went
off in an animated, but, I regret to say, utterly untruthful and
untrustworthy account of the habits of California fauna, until he was
interrupted by Johnson.

"And snakes, eh, Tommy?" said the man, with an abstracted air, gazing
intently on the ground before him.

"And snakes," said Tommy; "but they don't bite, at least not