stant assault. The
garment of his old bad past fell from him, leaving him as one exposed in
the market-place to the scornful towels of Chinamen. "You run, ol' Jim
Time! How you think catch 'um din' not have wood?"

"Now I was jest goin' to," mumbled Jimmie Time; and he amazingly slunk
from the scene of his late triumphs toward the open front of a
woodhouse.

His insulter turned back to the kitchen with a final affronting flourish
of the towel. The whisper of Boogles came hoarsely to me: "Some of these
days Little Sure Shot'll put a dose o' cold lead through that Chink's
heart."

"Is he really dangerous?" I demanded.

"Dangerous!" Boogles choked warmly on this. "Let me tell you, that old
boy is the real Peruvian doughnuts, and no mistake! Some day there won't
be so many Chinks round this dump. No, sir-ee! That little cutthroat'll
have another notch in his gun."

The situation did indeed seem to brim with the cheerfullest promise; yet
something told me that Little Sure Shot was too good, too perfect.
Something warned me that he suffered delusions of grandeur--that he
fell, in fact, somewhat short of being the real doughnuts, either of a
Peruvian or any other valued sort.

Nor had many hours passed ere it befell emphatically even so. There had
been the evening meal, followed by an hour or so of the always pleasing
and often instructive talk of my hostess, Mrs. Lysander John Pettengill,
who has largely known life for sixty years and found it entertaining and
good. And we had parted at an early nine, both tired from the work and
the play that had respectively engaged us the day long.

My candle had just been extinguished when three closely fired shots
cracked the vast stillness of the night. Ensued vocal explosions of a
curdling shrillness from the back of the house. One instantly knew them
to be indignant and Chinese. Caucasian ears gathered this much. I looked
from an open window as the impassioned cries came nearer. The lucent
moon of the mountains flooded that side of the house, and starkly into
its light from round the nearest corner struggled Lew Wee, the Chinaman.
He shone refulgent, being yet in the white or full-dress uniform of his
calling.

In one hand he held the best gun of Jimmie Time; in the other--there
seemed to be a well-gripped connection with the slack of a buckskin
shirt--writhed the alleged real doughnuts of a possibly Peruvian
character. The captor looked aloft and remained vocal, waving the