It was twenty seven minutes past two o’clock yesterday afternoon.  The chaste white mystery of Shigo Mountain was already taking on a faint, almost imperceptible, hint of pink, like the warm cheek of a girl who hears a voice and anticipates a blush.  Yet the rays of the afternoon sun rested with undiminished radiance on the empty pork-barrel in front of McMullin’s shebang.  A small and vagrant infant, whose associations with empty barrels were doubtless hitherto connected solely with dreams of saccharine dissipation, approached the bunghole with precocious caution, and retired with celerity and a certain acquisition of experience.  An unattached goat, a martyr to the radical theory of personal investigation, followed in the footsteps of infantile humanity, retired with even greater promptitude, and was fain to stay its stomach on a presumably empty rend-rock can, afterward going into seclusion behind McMullin’s horse-shed, before the diuretic effect of tin flavored with blasting-powder could be observed by the attentive eye of science.

Mr. Kilburn emerged from the hostlery without Mr. McMullin.  Mr. Kilburn, as we have before stated at his own request, is a gentleman of imposing presence.  It is well that we made this statement when we did, for it is hard to judge of the imposing quality in a gentleman’s presence when that gentleman is suspended from the arm of another gentleman by the collar of the first gentleman’s coat.  The gentleman in the rear of Mr. Kilburn was Mr. William Beauvoir, a young Englishman in a check suit.  Mr. Beauvoir is not avowedly a man of imposing presence; he wears a seal ring, and he is generally a scion of an effete oligarchy, but he has, since his introduction into this community, behaved himself, to use the adjectivial adverb of Mr. McMullin, white, and he has a very remarkable biceps.  These qualities may hereafter enhance his popularity in New Centreville.

Mr. Beauvoir’s movements, at twenty-seven minutes past two yesterday afternoon, were few and simple.  He doubled Mr. Kilburn up, after the fashion of an ordinary jack-knife, and placed him in the barrel, wedge-extremity first, remarking, as he did so, “She is, is she?” He then rammed Mr. Kilburn carefully home, and put the cover on.

We learn to-day that Mr. Kilburn has resumed his professional duties on the road.

DOCUMENT NO. 28.

Account of the same event from the New Centreville “Standard” December 24th, 1878:

It seems strange that even the holy influences which radiate from this joyous season cannot keep some men from getting into unseemly wrangles.  It was only yesterday that our local saw a street row here in the quiet avenues of our peaceful city—­a street row recalling the riotous scenes which took place here before Dead Horse experienced a change of heart and became New Centreville.  Our local succeeded in gathering all the particulars of the affray, and the following statement is reliable.  It seems