n' ma
chillens cain't eat, an' I cain't sleep, an' he ain't right in his
haid, an'--"

"You told me all those things."

After scratching his wool, and beating his knee with his hat, and
gazing off through the trees and down at the ground, Williams said, as
he kicked nervously at the gravel, "Well, jedge, I think it is wuth--"
He stuttered.

"Worth what?"

"Six dollehs," answered Williams, in a desperate outburst.

The judge lay back in his great arm-chair and went through all the
motions of a man laughing heartily, but he made no sound save a slight
cough. Williams had been watching him with apprehension.

"Well," said the judge, "do you call six dollars a salary?"

"No, seh," promptly responded Williams. "'Tain't a salary. No, 'deed!
'Tain't a salary." He looked with some anger upon the man who
questioned his intelligence in this way.

"Well, supposing your children can't eat?"

"I--"

"And supposing he looks like a devil? And supposing all those things
continue? Would you be satisfied with six dollars a week?"

Recollections seemed to throng in Williams's mind at these
interrogations, and he answered dubiously. "Of co'se a man who ain't
right in his haid, an' looks like er devil--But six dollehs--" After
these two attempts at a sentence Williams suddenly appeared as an
orator, with a great shiny palm waving in the air. "I tell yeh, jedge,
six dollehs is six dollehs, but if I git six dollehs for bo'ding
Hennery Johnson, I uhns it! I uhns it!"

"I don't doubt that you earn six dollars for every week's work you
do," said the judge.

"Well, if I bo'd Hennery Johnson fer six dollehs er week, I uhns it! I
uhns it!" cried Williams, wildly.

[Illustration: "'If I Get Six Dollehs for Bo'ding Hennery Johnson, I
Uhns It'"]

XIV

Reifsnyder's assistant had gone to his supper, and the owner of the
shop was trying to placate four men who wished to be shaved at once.
Reifsnyder was very garrulous--a fact which made him rather remarkable
among barbers, who, as a class, are austerely speechless, having been
taught silence by the hammering reiteration of a tradition. It is the
customers who talk in the ordinary event.

As Reifsnyder waved his razor down the cheek of a man in the chair, he
turned often to cool the impatience of the others with pleasant talk,
which they did not particularly heed.

"Oh, he should have let him die," said Bainbridge, a railway engineer,
finally replying to one of the barber's o