holding his nose as he did so—while to crown the uproar and confusion, a tall policeman who had been sitting with his feet braced against the large upright stove, and his chair tipped back, straightening himself out in his effort to rise and join in the flight, sent the stove end over end on the floor, the long pipe following suit, and coming down on the affrighted crowd joint by joint, flinging clouds of sticky coal-soot and smoke in all directions. When the stampede was over at last, and Mike had so far recovered from his attack of snakes as to be able to comprehend the situation, he arose, tottered over to the reporters' desk, and thus freed his mind: "By, if I murdered the man who put that centipede in my bosom, any jury in Christendom would render a verdict of justifiable homicide! But, boys, it's my next deal, and I'll be if you ever get a chance to play that on me again! If it had got down into my boots I'd never have drawn another sane breath so long as I lived. As it is, I'll never draw another drunken one, damn you!"
And Mike kept his word like a man, stopped drinking entirely, devoted himself to the practice of his profession industriously, rose step by step in public estimation, and now holds an important office, to which he was elected by the votes of his life-long friends and acquaintances, many of whom to this day tell with infinite gusto and roars of laughter the story of Mike Durfee's snake.
We built a glorious camp-fire in the little opening like an artificial clearing in front of the great madroño, and with the remnants of our lunch and the spoils of
