fusion in pandemonium now reigned supreme. For
one precious moment the air seemed full of long-legged stockings and
delicate hands and purses. Luckily, the brooch was found and peace
restored at once. And Rose said, "Oh, girls, how could you!" and she
begged my pardon and said they did not mean it. And then I made myself
very useful and agreeable to these lovely maids, lacing their shoes and
dusting their chamber, and right gallantly did I serve them until
evening.

After supper reappeared my evil genius in the person of the landlord,
who took me out to the woodshed. "Dutchy, I have decided to adopt you
as my only son; have you ever bucked a wood saw?" said he, and a
sardonic leer distorted his evil features. After I recovered
sufficiently from the shock, I answered indignantly, "Sir, know ye not
that I have pledged my service to the vestal virgins of yon temple?"
"Ha! Ha!" laughed the villain, "get busy now, son, and if by morning
this wood has not been cut, you will go minus your breakfast."
Thereupon he locked me in.

Caught as a rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with this
man's outrageous demands. Despairingly I plied that abominable
instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America. This is the
only American institution I could never accustom myself to. I have
endured bucking bronchos in New Mexico, I have bucked the tiger in
Arizona, but to buck a wood-saw--perish the thought! Sore and weary, I
lay down in a corner of the shed on some hay and fell asleep. I dreamed
that I heard screams of women, mingled with song and laughter, and
through it all the noise of music and dancing. Then the dream changed
into a horrible nightmare in the shape of a big sawhorse which kicked
at me and threatened me with hard labor.

Toward morning, when the door was opened and a drunken ruffian entered,
I awoke from my troubled slumbers. "Hi, Dutchy, and have yez any tin?"
he threatened. "Kind sir," I replied, "when I departed for the West I
left all my wealth behind me." Verily, now I was proving myself the
worthy scion of valiant men, who had laid aside hauberk, sword, and
lance, taken up the Bible and stole, and thenceforth fought only with
the weapon of Samson, the strong!

"And so yez are, by special appointment, chamberlain to the gurruls by
day, and ivver sawing wood at nighttime! Bedad! I'll shpile the thrick
for Misther Payterson, the thaving baste, and take this little
greenhorn out of his clutches and