ged the sender to repeat it aloud for the sake of
accuracy, and even suggested a few verbal alterations, ostensibly
to insure correctness, but really to extract further information.
Nevertheless, the man doggedly persisted in a literal transcript of his
message. The operator went to his instrument hesitatingly.

"I suppose," he added half-questioningly, "there ain't no chance of
a mistake. This address is Rightbody, that rich old Bostonian that
everybody knows. There ain't but one?"

"That's the address," responded the first speaker coolly.

"Didn't know the old chap had investments out here," suggested the
operator, lingering at his instrument.

"No more did I," was the insufficient reply.

For some few moments nothing was heard but the click of the instrument,
as the operator worked the key, with the usual appearance of imparting
confidence to a somewhat reluctant hearer who preferred to talk himself.
The two men stood by, watching his motions with the usual awe of
the unprofessional. When he had finished, they laid before him two
gold-pieces. As the operator took them up, he could not help saying,--

"The old man went off kinder sudden, didn't he? Had no time to write?"

"Not sudden for that kind o' man," was the exasperating reply.

But the speaker was not to be disconcerted. "If there is an answer--" he
began.

"There ain't any," replied the first speaker quietly.

"Why?"

"Because the man ez sent the message is dead."

"But it's signed by you two."

"On'y ez witnesses--eh?" appealed the first speaker to his comrade.

"On'y ez witnesses," responded the other.

The operator shrugged his shoulders. The business concluded, the first
speaker slightly relaxed. He nodded to the operator, and turned to the
bar-room with a pleasing social impulse. When their glasses were set
down empty, the first speaker, with a cheerful condemnation of the hard
times and the weather, apparently dismissed all previous proceedings
from his mind, and lounged out with his companion. At the corner of the
street they stopped.

"Well, that job's done," said the first speaker, by way of relieving the
slight social embarrassment of parting.

"Thet's so," responded his companion, and shook his hand.

They parted. A gust of wind swept through the pines, and struck a faint
Aeolian cry from the wires above their heads; and the rain and the
darkness again slowly settled upon Cottonwood.

The message lagged a little at San Francis