whiff of smoke contemptuously toward me, and said, with a still more
elaborate drawl:

"Come--go gently now; don't put on too many airs with your betters."

This cool snub rasped me all over, but it seemed to subjugate me, too,
for a moment. The pygmy contemplated me awhile with his weasel eyes,
and then said, in a peculiarly sneering way:

"You turned a tramp away from your door this morning."

I said crustily:

"Perhaps I did, perhaps I didn't. How do you know?"

"Well, I know. It isn't any matter how I know."

"Very well. Suppose I did turn a tramp away from the door--what of it?"

"Oh, nothing; nothing in particular. Only you lied to him."

"I didn't! That is, I--"

"Yes, but you did; you lied to him."

I felt a guilty pang--in truth, I had felt it forty times before that
tramp had traveled a block from my door--but still I resolved to make a
show of feeling slandered; so I said:

"This is a baseless impertinence. I said to the tramp--"