“Oh, my dear sir, really you expose yourself when you parade that as a surprising circumstance.  Bless your heart and hide, you are ignorant of the very A B C of meanness! ignorant as the unborn babe! ignorant as unborn twins!  You don’t know anything about it!  It is pitiable to see you, sir, a well-spoken and prepossessing stranger, making such an enormous pow-wow here about a subject concerning which your ignorance is perfectly humiliating!  Look me in the eye, if you please; look me in the eye.  John James Godfrey was the son of poor but honest parents in the State of Mississippi—­boyhood friend of mine—­bosom comrade in later years.  Heaven rest his noble spirit, he is gone from us now.  John James Godfrey was hired by the Hayblossom Mining Company in California to do some blasting for them—­the “Incorporated Company of Mean Men,” the boys used to call it.

“Well, one day he drilled a hole about four feet deep and put in an awful blast of powder, and was standing over it ramming it down with an iron crowbar about nine foot long, when the cussed thing struck a spark and fired the powder, and scat! away John Godfrey whizzed like a skyrocket, him and his crowbar!  Well, sir, he kept on going up in the air higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a boy—­and he kept going on up higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a doll—­and he kept on going up higher and higher, till he didn’t look any bigger than a little small bee—­and then he went out of sight!  Presently he came in sight again, looking like a little small bee—­and he came along down further and further, till he looked as big as a doll again—­and down further and further, till he was as big as a boy again—­and further and further, till he was a full-sized man once more; and then him and his crowbar came a wh-izzing down and lit right exactly in the same old tracks and went to r-ramming down, and r-ramming down, and r-ramming down again, just the same as if nothing had happened!  Now do you know, that poor cuss warn’t gone only sixteen minutes, and yet that Incorporated Company of Mean Men docked him for the lost time!”

I said I had the headache, and so excused myself and went home.  And on my diary I entered “another night spoiled” by this offensive loafer.  And a fervent curse was set down with it to keep the item company.  And the very next day I packed up, out of all patience, and left the Island.

Almost from the very beginning, I regarded that man as a liar.

The line of points represents an interval of years.  At the end of which time the opinion hazarded in that last sentence came to be gratifyingly and remarkably endorsed, and by wholly disinterested persons.  The man Markiss was found one morning hanging to a beam of his own bedroom (the doors and windows securely fastened on the inside), dead; and on his breast was pinned a paper in his own handwriting begging his friends