There was not so much chance of indulging it now, however.  The Fire Company had disbanded, and nearly every one had grown rich enough to own a shot-gun.  There was only one chance left.

He joined the Presbyterian Choir.

Not that he had much of a voice, though he used to play ‘Comin’ thro’ the Rye’ oh the fiddle sometimes, until he got it going through him so much he couldn’t draw a note.

Nobody would have taken them if he had.

Well, SLUKER had a pretty warm time of it in the Choir, and enjoyed himself very much, until they got a new Organist who pitched every thing in ‘high C,’ which was this young man’s strong lead.

As the Choir always sang in G, of coarse, there was a row the first Sunday, and it was generally understood that SLUKER was going to fix MIDDLERIB that night.

When the evening service commenced, and the Choir was about to begin, the congregation were startled by an ominous click in the gallery, and looking up, they beheld SLUKER covering the Organist’s second shirt-stud with his revolver.

“Give us G, Mr. MIDDLERIB, if you please!” he said blandly.

But the pirate on the high C’s refused to Gee, and Whoa was the natural result.

The confusion that followed was terrible:  SLUKER fired at everybody.  MIDDLERIB hit him with the music stool.  The soprano was thrown over the railing, and somebody turned off the gas.

In the ensuing darkness every one skirmished for themselves.  SLUKER took off his boots and hunted for MIDDLERIB in his stocking feet.

Suddenly he heard a single note on the ‘high C.’  He groped his way to the keyboard, but there was no one there.

The solution rushed upon him,—­MIDDLERIB must be in the organ.

He crept round to the handle and bore his weight on it.

It was too true; the unhappy wretch had cut a hole in the bellows and crawled in.  But for his ruling passion he would have escaped.

There were a few muffled groans as the handle slowly descended upon the doomed man, and as the breath rushed out of his body into his favorite pipe, the wild ’high C of agony that ran through the sacred edifice told them that all was over.

Let us draw a vail over the horrid picture.”

* * *

I was very much interested in this story, very much indeed, and so I jostled the long-haired man—­who was about falling asleep—­and asked him if anything was done to this wicked SLUKER.

He looked at me reproachfully.  “What’s the matter with you, my friend?” he said, in the same melancholy voice.  “Don’t you know who I am?  I write for the Ledger, and whenever ‘I draw a vail, etc.,’ that ends it, that does!”

As we stepped from the steamer to the landing, I observed a youth of about six summers dressed in the most elaborately agonizing manner.  He had two Schutzenfest targets in his cuffs; in one hand he held an enormous cane, in the other a cigar, and through an eyeglass he gazed at the ankles on the gang-plank with an air of patient weariness with this slow old world that was very touching.