alteration, or destruction. He glanced at it and his face clouded. He
ran his eye down the pages, and his countenance grew portentous. It was
easy to see that something was wrong. Presently he sprang up and said:

"Thunder and lightning! Do you suppose I am going to speak of those
cattle that way? Do you suppose my subscribers are going to stand such
gruel as that? Give me the pen!"

I never saw a pen scrape and scratch its way so viciously, or plow
through another man's verbs and adjectives so relentlessly. While he was
in the midst of his work, somebody shot at him through the open window,
and marred the symmetry of my ear.

"Ah," said he, "that is that scoundrel Smith, of the Moral Volcano--he
was due yesterday." And he snatched a navy revolver from his belt and
fired--Smith dropped, shot in the thigh. The shot spoiled Smith's aim,
who was just taking a second chance and he crippled a stranger. It was
me. Merely a finger shot off.

Then the chief editor went on with his erasure; and interlineations.
Just as he finished them a hand grenade came down the stove-pipe, and the
explosion shivered the stove into a thousand fragments. However, it did
no further damage, except that a vagrant piece knocked a couple of my
teeth out.

"That stove is utterly ruined," said the chief editor.

I said I believed it was.

"Well, no matter--don't want it this kind of weather. I know the man