hen the telegram come, he put a pistol to his head and saved them all
trouble. Good riddance to everybody, I say. The sheriff's here now, and
is going east on the next train to get them fellows. He's got a big
posse together, and I wouldn't wonder if they was hard to hold in, after
the 'boys in blue' is gone."

In a few minutes the train was off, with its living freight--the just
and the unjust, the reformed and the rescued, the happy and the anxious.
With many of the passengers the episode of the night was already a thing
of the past. Sinclair sat by the side of his wife, to whose cheeks the
color had all come back; and Sally Johnson lay in her berth, faint
still, but able to give an occasional smile to Foster. In the station on
the Missouri the reporters were gathered about the happy superintendent,
smoking his cigars, and filling their note-books with items. In Denver,
their brethren would gladly have done the same, but Watkins failed to
gratify them. He was a man of few words. When the train had gone, and a
friend remarked:

"Hope they'll get through all right, now," he simply said:

"Yes, likely. Two shots don't 'most always go in the same hole." Then he
went to the telegraph instrument. In a few minutes he could have told a
story as wild as a Norse _saga_, but what he said, when Denver had
responded, was only--

_"No. 17, fifty-five minutes late."_

THE MISFORTUNES OF BRO' THOMAS WHEATLEY.

By LINA REDWOOD FAIRFAX.

He is our office-boy and messenger, and, my senior tells me, has been
employed by the firm in this capacity for about thirty years. He is a
negro, about sixty years old, rather short and stout, with a mincing,
noiseless gait, broad African features, beautiful teeth, and small,
round, twinkling eyes, the movements of which are accompanied by little
abrupt, sidewise turns of the head, like a bird. His manner is a curious
mixture of deference and self-importance, his voice a soft, sibilant
whisper, and as he was born and bred in Alexandria, Virginia, it seems
almost superfluous to add that he and the letter "r" are not on speaking
terms.

He has a prominent characteristic, which always attracts attention at
first sight. This is the shape of his head, which is immensely large in
proportion, very bald, and so abundant in various queer, knobby
excrescences about the forehead and sides, and so unnaturally long and
level on top, that for some time after I made his acquaintance I could
never s