of my hostess, and there boomed into the already vivacious libretto a
passionate barytone, or thereabout, of sterling timbre.

"What in the name of--"

I leave it there. To do so is not only kind but necessary. The most
indulgent censor that ever guarded the columns of a print intended for
young and old about the evening lamp would swiftly delete from this
invocation, if not the name of Deity itself, at least the greater number
of the attributes with which she endowed it. A few were conventional
enough, but they served only to accentuate others that were too hastily
selected in the heat of this crisis. Enough to say that the lady
overbore by sheer mass of tone production the strident soprano of Lew
Wee, controlling it at length to a lucid disclosure of his grievance.

From the doorway of his kitchen, inoffensively proffering a final
cigarette to the radiant night, he had been the target of three shots
with intent to kill. He submitted the weapon. He submitted the writhing
assassin.

"I catch 'um!" he said effectively, and rested his case.

"Now--I aimed over his head." It was Jimmie Time alias Little Sure Shot,
and he whimpered the words. "I jest went to play a sell on him."

The voice of the judge boomed wrathfully on this:

"You darned pestering mischief, you! Ain't I forbid you time and again
ever to load them guns? Where'd you get the ca'tridges?"