were as thick as two body-snatchers, and I was hitting out a cordial
resemblance to "Buffalo Gals, Can't You Come Out To-night," on the
banjo.

One day I got a telegram from Speight, the man that was working on a
mine I had an interest in out in New Mexico. I had to go out there;
and I was gone two months. I was anxious to get back to Pina and enjoy
life once more.

When I struck the cabin I nearly fainted. Mack was standing in the
door; and if angels ever wept, I saw no reason why they should be
smiling then.

That man was a spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was
the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and
shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as
big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was
smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper or a kid
with colic.

"Hello, Andy," says Mack, out of his face. "Glad to see you back.
Things have happened since you went away."

"I know it," says I, "and a sacrilegious sight it is. God never made
you that way, Mack Lonsbury. Why do you scarify His works with this
presumptuous kind of ribaldry?"

"Why, Andy," says he, "they've elected me justice of the peace since
you left."

I looked at Mack close. He was restless and inspired. A justice of the
peace ought to be disconsolate and assuaged.

Just then a young woman passed on the sidewalk; and I saw Mack kind of
half snicker and blush, and then he raised up his hat and smiled and
bowed, and she smiled and bowed, and went on by.

"No hope for you," says I, "if you've got the Mary-Jane infirmity at
your age. I thought it wasn't going to take on you. And patent leather
shoes! All this in two little short months!"

"I'm going to marry the young lady who just passed to-night," says
Mack, in a kind of flutter.

"I forgot something at the post-office," says I, and walked away
quick.

I overtook that young woman a hundred yards away. I raised my hat and
told her my name. She was about nineteen; and young for her age. She
blushed, and then looked at me cool, like I was the snow scene from
the "Two Orphans."

"I understand you are to be married to-night," I said.

"Correct," says she. "You got any objections?"

"Listen, sissy," I begins.

"My name is Miss Rebosa Redd," says she in a pained way.

"I know it," says I. "Now, Rebosa, I'm old enough to have owed money
to your father. And that old, specious, dressed-up, garbled,