Ah Fe gazed at him placidly, and withdrew.
Before leaving Fiddletown, however, he accidentally met Colonel Starbottle, and dropped a few incoherent phrases which apparently interested that gentleman.

When he concluded, the colonel handed him a letter and a twenty-dollar gold piece.

"If you bring me an answer, I'll double that--sabe, John ?" Ah Fe nodded.

An interview equally accidental, with precisely the same result, took place between Ah Fe and another gentleman, whom I suspect to have been the youthful editor of the AVALANCHE.

Yet I regret to state that, after proceeding some distance on his journey, Ah Fe calmly broke the seals of both letters, and after trying to read them upside down and sideways, finally divided them into accurate squares, and in this condition disposed of them to a brother Celestial whom he met on the road, for a trifling gratuity.