An impulse to walk seized him, and he did so, quietly, steadily, until he met a stranger, a man whose clothing bespoke his residence in another region.

“Good morning, gentle sir,” said Ike.

“Good morning, friend,” said the other, smiling.

“Gentle sir,” said Ike, “just lemme look at your watch a minute, won’t you, please?”

Laughingly the stranger complied, suspecting only that his odd accoster might have tarried too long over his cups.  Ike took the watch in his hand, looked at it gravely for a moment, then gave it a jerk that broke the chain, and dropped it into his own pocket.

“I like it,” said he simply, and passed on.  The stranger followed, about to use violence, but caught sight of a white-faced man, who through a window vehemently beckoned him to pause.

Ike Anderson stepped into a saloon and took a straw from a glass standing on the bar, exercising an exact and critical taste in its selection.  “I’m very thirsty,” he remarked plaintively.  Saying which, he shot a hole in a barrel of whisky, inserted the straw, and drank lingeringly.

“Thank you,” he said softly, and shot the glass of straws off the counter.  “Thank you.  Not after me.”  The whisky ran out over the floor, out of the door, over the path and into the road, but no one raised a voice in rebuke.

The blue flame burned a trifle higher in Ike Anderson’s brain.  He was growing very much intoxicated, and therefore very quiet and very sober-looking.  He did not yell and flourish his revolvers, but walked along decently, engaged in thought.  He was a sandy-complexioned man, not over five feet six inches in height.  His long front teeth projected very much, giving him a strange look.  His chin was not heavy and square, but pointed, and his jaws were narrow.  His eye was said by some to have been hazel when he was sober, though others said it was blue, or gray.  No one had ever looked into it carefully enough to tell its colour when Ike Anderson was drunk, as he was to-day.

Ike Anderson passed by the front of the Cottage Hotel.  A negro boy, who worked about the place, was sweeping idly at the porch door, shuffling lazily about at his employment.  Ike paused and looked amiably at him for some moments.

“Good morning, coloured scion,” he said pleasantly.

“Mawnin’, boss,” said the negro, grinning widely.

“Coloured scion,” said Ike, “hereafter—­to oblige me—­would you mind whoopin’ it up with yore broom a leetle faster?”

The negro scowled and muttered, and the next moment sprang sprawling forward with a scream.  Ike had shot off the heel of his shoe, in the process not sparing all of the foot.  The negro went ashy pale, and believed himself mortally hurt, but was restored by the icy tones of his visitor, who said, evenly and calmly: 

“Coloured scion, please go over into that far corner and begin to sweep there, and then come on over the rest of the flo’.  Now, sweep!”