“Pete was kind of convinced now that he’d had a sure-enough trial, and his friends had seen the marble walls and red carpet and varnished furniture, and everything; so he consented to be set free—­not in any rush, but like he was willing to do ’em a favour.

“And all the time he’s keeping a bad little eye on J. Waldo.  The minute he gets down from the stand he makes for him and says what does he mean by saying he was crazy when he done this killing?  J. Waldo tries to explain that this was his only defense and was going on to tell what an elegant defense it was; but Pete gets madder and madder.  I guess he’d been called everything in the world before, but never crazy; that’s the very worst thing you can tell an Injin.

“They work out toward the front door; and then I hear Pete say:  ’You know what?  You said I’m crazy.  My b’other-in-law’s going to make something happen to you in the night.’  Pete was seeing red by that time.  The judge tells Myron to hurry and get the room cleared and open some windows.  Myron didn’t have to clear it of J.W.  Snyder.  That bright young lawyer dashed out and was fifty feet ahead of the bunch when they got to the front door.

“So Pete was a free man once more, without a stain on his character except to them that knew him well.  But the old fool had lost me a tenant.  Yes, sir; this J.W.  Snyder young man, with the sign hardly dry on the glass door of his office in the Pettengill Block, had a nervous temperament to start with, and on top of that he’d gone fully into Pete’s life history and found out that parties his brother-in-law was displeased with didn’t thrive long.  He packed up his law library that afternoon and left for another town that night.

“Yes, Pete’s a wonder!  Watch him slaving away out there.  And he must of been working hard all day, even with me not here to keep tabs on him.  Just look at the size of that pile of wood he’s done up, when he might easy of been loafing on the job!”

IX

LITTLE OLD NEW YORK

Monday’s mail for the Arrowhead was brought in by the Chinaman while Ma Pettengill and I loitered to the close of the evening meal:  a canvas sack of letters and newspapers with three bulky packages of merchandise that had come by parcels post.  The latter evoked a passing storm from my hostess.  Hadn’t she warned folks time and again to send all her stuff by express instead of by parcels post, which would sure get her gunned some day by the stage driver who got nothing extra for hauling such matter?  She had so!

We trifled now with a fruity desert and the lady regaled me with a brief exposure of our great parcels-post system as a piece of the nerviest penny pinching she had ever known our Government guilty of.  Because why?  Because these here poor R.F.D. stage drivers had to do the extra hauling for nothing.