' moanin' n' callin' his name: Asa--Asa--Asa--(hic)
Arnold--'shure 's I'm a sinner she--"

He did not finish. Very suddenly the surrounding group had scattered,
and he peered up through maudlin tears to learn the cause. One man
alone stood above him. The room had grown still as a church.

The drunken one blinked his watery eyes and showed his yellow teeth in
a convivial grin.

"G'd evnin', pard.... Serve th'--th' gem'n, Barney; m' treat." Again
the teeth obtruded. "Was jes'--"

"Get up!"

He of the story winked harder than before.

"Bless m'--" He paused for an expletive, hiccoughed, and forgetting
what had caused the halt, stumbled on:--"Didn' rec'gniz' y'
b'fore. Shake, ol' boy. S--sh-sorry for y'." Tears rose copiously.
"Tough--when feller's wife--"

Interrupting suddenly a muffled sound like the distant exhaust of a
big engine--the meeting of a heavy boot with an obstacle on the floor.
"Get up!"

A very mountain of human brawn resolved itself upward; a hand on its
hips; a curse on its lips.

[Illustration: "You'll apologize."]

"You damned lantern-faced--" No hiccough now, but a pause from pure
physical impotence, pending a doubtful struggle against a half-dozen
men.

"Order, gentlemen!" demanded the bar-keeper, adding emphasis by
hammering a heavy bottle on the bar.

"Let him go," commanded Ichabod very quietly; but they all heard
through the confusion. "Let him go."

The country was by no means the wild West of the story-papers, but it
was primitive, and no man thought, then, of preventing the obviously
inevitable.

Ichabod held up his hand, suggestively, imperatively, and the crowd
fell back, silent,--leaving him facing the big man.

"You'll apologize!" The thin jaw showed clear, through the shade of
brown stubble on Ichabod's face.

For answer, the big man leaning on the bar exhibited his discolored
teeth and breathed hard.

"How shall it be?" asked Ichabod.

A grimy hand twitched toward a grimier hip.

"You've seen the likes of this--"

Ichabod turned toward the spectators.

"Will any man lend me--"

"Here--"

"Here--"

"And give us a little light."

"Outside," suggested the saloon-keeper.

"We're not advertising patent medicine," blazed Ichabod, and the lamps
were lit immediately.

Once more the long-visaged man appealed to the group lined up now
against the bar.

"Gentlemen--I never carried a revolver a half-hour in my life. Is it
any more than fair that I name the de