And as I before remarked, our beloved comrade, Lige Bemis, is certainly a gallus-looking slink." "Far be it from me," continued the colonel, "residing as I may say in a rather open and somewhat exposed domicile--a glass house in fact--to throw stones at Elijah Westlake Bemis,--far be it." The colonel patted himself heroically on the stomach and laughed.
"Doubtless, while I haven't been a professional horse thief, nor a cattle rustler, still, probably, if the truth was known, I've done a number of things equally distasteful--I was going to say obnoxious--in the sight of Mr.Bemis, so we'll let that pass." The colonel stretched his suspenders out and let them flap against the plaits of his immaculate shirt.

"But I will say, General, that as I see it, it will be a heap handier for me to explain to St.Peter at the gate the things I've done than if he'd ask me about Lige's record." The general scratched along, without answering, and the colonel looked meditatively into the street; then he began to smile, and the smile glowed into a beam that bespread his countenance and sank into a mood that set his vest to shaking "like a bowl full of jelly." "I was just thinking," he said to nobody in particular, "that if Lige was jumped out of his grave right quick by Gabriel and hauled up before St.Peter and asked to justify my record, he'd have some trouble too--considerable difficulty, I may say.

I reckon it's all a matter of having to live with your sins till you get a good excuse thought up." The general pushed aside his work impatiently and tilted back in his chair.

"Come, Martin Culpepper, come, come! That won't do.

You know better than that.