Then there was another click, a stamp on the floor, and a voice crying coarsely: "Curse it all--missed again!" To the stranger's astonishment, the Colonel was on his feet in an instant, gasping with inarticulate rage.

Flinging the door open, he confronted the startled bar-keeper empurpled and stertorous.
"Blank it all, sir, do you call this a saloon for gentlemen, or a corral for swearing cattle?
Or do you mean to say that the conversation of two gentlemen upon delicate professional--and--er--domestic affairs--is to be broken upon by the blank profanity of low-bred hounds over their picayune gambling! Take them my kyard, sir," choked the Colonel, who was always Southern and dialectic in his excited as in his softest moments, "and tell them that Colonel Starbottle will nevah dyarken these doahs again." Before the astonished bar-keeper could reply, the Colonel had dashed back into the room, clapped his hat on his head, and seized his book, letters, and cane.

"Mr.Corbin," he said with gasping dignity, "I will take these papahs, and consult them again in my own office--where, if you will do me the honor, sir, to call at ten o'clock to-morrow, I will give you my opinion." He strode out of the saloon beside the half awe-stricken, half-amused, yet all discreetly silent loungers, followed by his wondering but gloomy client.

At the door they parted,--the Colonel tiptoeing towards his office as if dancing with rage, the stranger darkly plodding through the stifling dust in the opposite direction, with what might have been a faint suggestion to his counselor, that the paths of the homicide did not lie beside the still cool waters..