ished to test in speech the widely alleged merits of this
vocable. I found it do all that has been claimed for it. Its effect on
Boogles was so withering that I used it repeatedly in the next three
minutes. I even faughed him twice in succession, which is very insulting
and beneficial indeed, and has a pleasant feel on the lips.

"And now then," I said, "if you don't give me the truth of this matter
here and now, one of us two is going to be mighty sorry for it."

In the early moments of my violence Boogles had protested weakly; then
he began to quiver perilously. On this I soothed him, and at the
precisely right moment I cajoled. I lured him to the bench by the corral
gate, and there I conferred costly cigarettes on him as man to man.
Discreetly then I sounded for the origins of a certain bad man who had a
way--even though they might crease him--of leaving deputy marshals where
he found them. Boogles smoked one of the cigarettes before he succumbed;
but first:

"Let me git my work," said he, and was off to the bunk house.

I observed his part in an extended parley before the door was opened to
him. He came to me on the bench a moment later, bearing a ball of
scarlet yarn, a large crochet hook of bone, and something begun in the
zephyr but as yet without form.

"I'm making the madam a red one for her birthday," he confided.

He bent his statesman's head above the task and wrought with nimble
fingers the while he talked. It was difficult, this talk of his,
scattered, fragmentary; and his mind would go from it, his voice expire
untimely. He must be prompted, recalled, questioned. His hands worked
with a very certain skill, but in his narrative he dropped stitches.
Made to pick these up, the result was still a droning monotony burdened
with many irrelevancies. I am loath to transcribe his speech. It were
better reported with an eye strictly to salience.

You may see, then--and I hope with less difficulty than I had in
seeing--Jimmie Time and Boogles on night duty at the front of the little
Western Union Office off Park Row in the far city of New York. The law
of that city is tender to the human young. Night messenger boys must be
adults. It is one of the preliminary shocks to the visitor--to ring for
the messenger boy of tradition and behold in his uniform a venerable
gentleman with perhaps a flowing white beard. I still think Jimmie Time
and Boogles were beating the law--on a technicality. Of course Jimmie
was far