But in the course of two or three hours there was a perceptible change of the general tone at Sim Ripson’s—­it was so every Saturday night, or Sunday morning.  Old Hatchetjaw said it was because Sim Ripson’s liquor wasn’t good; Moosoo, the Frenchman, maintained it was due to the absence of chivalrous spirit; Crosstree, the sailor, said it was always so with landsmen; Fourteenth Street privately confided to several that ’twas because there was no good blood in camp; the amateur phrenologist ascribed it to an undue cerebral circulation; and Uncle Ben, the deacon, insisted upon it that the fiend, personally, was the disturbing element.

Probably all of them were right, for it seemed impossible that the Sunday excitements at Sim Ripson’s could proceed from any single cause—­their proportions were too magnificent.

Drinking, singing, swearing, gambling, and fighting, the Tough Caseites made night so hideous that Uncle Ben spent half the night in earnest prayer for these misguided men, and the remainder of it in trying to make up his mind to start for home.

But by far the greater number of the boys, on that particular night, surrounded the table at which sat Redwing and Flip.  Both were playing their best, and as honestly as each was compelled to do by his adversary’s watchfulness.

Each had several times accused the other of cheating; each had his revolver at his right hand; and the crowd about them had the double pleasure of betting on the game and on which would shoot first.

Suddenly Redwing arose, as Flipp played an ace on his adversary’s last card, and raked the dust toward himself.

“Yer tuk that ace out of yer sleeve—­I seed yer do it.  Give me back my ounces,” said Redwing.

“It’s a lie!” roared the great Flipp, springing to his feet, and seizing Redwing’s pistol-arm.

The weapon fell, and both men clutched like tigers.  Sim Ripson leaped over the bar and separated them.

“No rasslin’ here!” said he.  “When gentlemen gits too mad to hold in, an’ shoots at sight, I hev to stan’ it, but rasslin’s vulgar—­you’ll hev to go out o’ doors to do it.”

“I’ll hev it out with him with pistols, then!” cried Redwing, picking up his weapon.

“’Greed!” roared Flip, whose pistol lay on the table.  “We’ll do it cross the crick, at daylight.

“It’s daylight now,” said Sim Ripson, hurriedly, after looking out of his window at the end of the bar.

He was a good storekeeper, was Sam Ripson, and he knew how to mix drinks, but he had an unconquerable aversion to washing blood stains out of the floor.

The two gamblers rushed out of the door, pistols in hand, and the crowd followed, each man talking at the top of his voice, and betting on the chances of the combatants.

Suddenly, above all the noise, they heard a cracked soprano voice singing with some unauthorized flatting and sharping: 

  “Another six days’ work is done,
  Another Sabbath is begun. 
  Return, my soul, enjoy thy rest,
  Improve the day thy God has blessed.”