of the newspapers.  But to satisfy curiosity, and to tell something about cooking, which Prof.  Blot does not know, I may say that they were broken and dropped on a piece of brown paper laid on the top of the old box-stove.  By the time the egg was cooked hard the paper was burned to ashes, but the egg came off clean and nice from the stove, and made as palatable and indigestible an article for a late supper as one could wish.  It only wanted the addition of Mandluff’s peculiar whisky to make it dissipation of the choicest kind.  For the more a dissipation costs in life and health, the more fascinating it is.

There was an egg-supper, as I said, at Mandluff’s store.  There was to be a “camp-meeting” in honor of Norman Anderson’s successful return to his liberty and his cronies.  It gave Norman, the greatest pleasure to return to a society where it was rather to his credit than otherwise that he had gone on a big old time, got caught, and been sent adrift by the old hunk that had tried to make him study Latin.

The eggs were baked in the true “camp-meeting” style, the whisky was drunk, and—­so was the company.  Bill Day’s rather red eyes grew redder, and his nose shone with delight as he shuffled the greasy pack of “kyerds.”  The maudlin smile crossed the habitually melancholy lines of his face in a way that split and splintered his visage into a curious contradiction of emotions.

“H—­a—­oo—­p!” He shouted, throwing away the cards over the heads of his companions.  “Ha—­oop! boys, thish is big—­hoo! hoo! ha—­oop!  I say is big.  Let’s do somethin’!”

Here there was a confused cry that “it was big, and that they had better do somethin’ or ’nother.”

“Let’s blow up the ole school-house,” said Bill Day, who was not friendly to education.

“I tell you what,” said Bob Short, who was dealing the cards in another set—­“I tell you what,” and Bob winked his eyes vigorously, and looked more solemn and wise than he could have looked if it had not been for the hard eggs and the whisky—­“I tell you what,” said Bob a third time, and halted, for his mind’s activity was a little choked by the fervor of his emotions—­“I tell you what, boys—­”

“Wal,” piped Jim West in a cracked voice, “you’ve told us what four times, I ‘low; now s’pose you tell us somethin’ else.”

“I tell you what, boys,” said Bob Short, suddenly remembering his sentence, “don’t let’s do nothin’ that’ll git us into no trouble arterwards.  Ef we blow up the school-house we’ll be ’rested fer bigamy or—­or—­what d’ye call it?”

“For larson,” said Bill Day, hardly able to restrain another whoop.

“No, ’taint larson,” said Bob Short, looking wiser than a chief-justice, “it’s arsony.  Now I say, don’t let’s go to penitentiary for no—­no larson—­no arsony, I mean.”

“Ha—­oop!” said Bill.  “Let’s do somethin’ ludikerous.  Hurrah for arsony and larson!  Dog-on the penitentiary!  Ha—­oop!”