had lived all his nine years in the town of Tobin, which is in
California, on the overland road, far enough up the Sierra climb for
the east-bound trains to have always two engines when they pass its
depot. He wore Chinese clothes, except upon his head, whereon
invariably reposed the time-honored hat of the American village boy,
that always looks the same whether it is one week or one year old--the
hat that is dirty gray in color, conical as to crown, sloping as to
brim, and dilapidated as to general appearance, the hat that is
irrefragable proof that its wearer is a Boy. This head-gear he wore
over the queue of his forefathers, braided, ebony, shining, and hanging
half-way down his little legs.

Wing could jabber Chinese as shrilly and rapidly as any of his
playmates of the Chinese quarter, and with his young friends of the
white race he could reel off amazing vocabularies of American slang.
And he could swear, and frequently did so, with all the nonchalance of
a Chinaman and the intensity and picturesqueness of an American. He
could, if the occasion seemed to demand it, drop his eyelids and "_No
sabe_" as stupidly as any Celestial who ever entered the Golden Gate.
But with any man, woman, or child whom he chose to favor with his
conversation he could talk volubly in fairly good English. And his
lungs were just as capable, and just as frequently put to the test, as
those of any white boy in Tobin, of the ear-splitting shouts and yells
without which boys' games cannot be played and boys' thoughts
communicated to one another.

Wing had such an amazing ability to seem to be everywhere at the same
time that he was nicknamed "Wings." But no one ever called him that to
his face who wanted him to answer a question or pay any attention to
what was said to him. The first time it was tried he protested, with