a flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket-compass.
If you will please sign this order ----"

Just here Tom Sayers came tearing through the office,
and without waiting for orders hitched straight on to the canvasser's calf.
To Macpherson's amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers
rolled about on the floor with his mouth full of a sticky substance
which seemed to surprise him badly.

The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last
he fancied he had got the solution. "Got a cork leg, have you?" said he --
"Well, let's see if your ribs are cork too," and he struck the canvasser
an awful blow on the fifth button of the waistcoat.

Quicker than lightning came that terrific right-hand cross-counter.
Macpherson never even knew what happened to him. The canvasser's
right hand, which had been adjusted by his inventor for a high blow,
had landed on the butt of Macpherson's ear and dropped him like a fowl.
The gasping, terrified bull-dog fled the scene, and the canvasser
stood over his fallen foe, still intoning the virtues of his publication.
He had come there merely as a friend, he said, to give the inhabitants
of Ninemile a chance to buy a book which had recently earned the approval
of King O'Malley and His Excellency the Governor-General.

The Genius and his mate watched this extraordinary drama
through the window. The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers
had induced in them a state of superlative Dutch courage,
and they looked upon the whole affair as a wildly hilarious joke.

"By Gad! he's done him," said the Genius, as Macpherson went down,