“Oh, let him get it offen his chest,” urged Buck wearily.  “He’ll perish if he don’t—­having two men here that never heard him tell it.”  He turned upon the raconteur, with a large sweetness of manner:  “Excuse me, Mr. Sawtelle!  Pray do go on with your thrilling reminiscence.  I could just die listening to you.  I believe you was wishing to entertain the company with one of them anecdotes or lies of which you have so rich a store in that there peaked dome of yours.  Gents, a moment’s silence while this rare personality unfolds hisself to us!”

“Say, lemme tell you—­here’s a good one!” resumed the still placid Sandy.  “I remember the first time, about three, four years ago, I ever went into The Swede’s.  A stranger goes in just ahead of me and gets to the bar before I do, kind of a solemn-looking, sandy-complected little runt in black clothes.

“‘A little of your best cooking whiskey,’ says he to the Swede, while I’m waiting beside him for my own drink.

“The Swede sets out the bottle and glass and a whisk broom on the bar.  That was sure a new combination on me.  ‘Why the whisk broom?’ I says to myself.  ’I been in lots of swell dives and never see no whisk broom served with a drink before.’  So I watch.  Well, this sad-looking sot pours out his liquor, shoots it into him with one tip of the glass; and, like he’d been shot, he falls flat on the floor, all bent up in a convulsion—­yes, sir; just like that!  And the Swede not even looking over the bar at him!

“In a minute he comes out of this here fit, gets on his feet and up to the bar, grabs the whisk broom, brushes the dust off his clothes where he’s rolled on the floor, puts back the whisk broom, says, ’So long, Ed!’ to the Swede—­and goes out in a very businesslike manner.

“Then the Swede shoves the bottle and a glass and the whisk broom over in front of me, but I says:  ’No, thanks!  I just come in to pass the time of day.  Lovely weather we’re having, ain’t it?’ Yes, sir; down he goes like he’s shot, wriggles a minute, jumps up, dusts hisself off, flies out the door; and the Swede passing me the same bottle and the same broom, and me saying:  ‘Oh, I just come in to pass the time of—­’”

The veterinary and I had been gravely attentive.  The faces of the others wore not even the tribute of pretended ennui.  They had betrayed an elaborate deafness.  They now affected to believe that Sandy Sawtelle had not related an anecdote.  They spoke casually and with an effect of polished ease while yet here capitulated, as tale-tellers so often will.

“I remember a kid, name of Henry Lippincott, used to set in front of me at school,” began Buck Devine, with the air of delicately breaking a long silence; “he’d wiggle his ears and get me to laughing out loud, and then I’d be called up for it by teacher and like as not kept in at recess.”

“You ought to seen that bunch of tame alligators down to the San Francisco Fair,” observed Squat genially.  “The old boy that had ’em says ’Oh, yes, they would make fine pets, and don’t I want a couple for ten dollars to take home to the little ones?’ But I don’t.  You come right down to household pets—­I ruther have me a white rabbit or a canary bird than an alligator you could step on in the dark some night and get all bit up, and mebbe blood poison set in.”