At this juncture “Aforesaid” fell by the wayside, and went to sleep under a spreading soapwood tree. That was an old chestnut of his.
Now, Will Borland, suffering from remorse, had protected and kindly entreated a new tramp at the 7 T X wagon. Will was afflicted with a nasty conscience that never got to working in time to keep him out of meanness, and then dealt him misery after it was everlastingly too late.
Well, this hobo of Borland’s came along and went right through “Aforesaid’s” clothes to the tune of ninety dollars. But Neighbor Jones saw him.
They rounded up the hobo when he got to town, found the money on him, woke “Aforesaid,” and compared profit and loss. So, after supper, they desired to give another reading of the “Kangaroo Court.” There was considerable opposition to this, and several stayed away, to their everlasting joy. But most of the remonstrants joined the majority, as this lad needed punishment.
The cast was different this trip, Kim Ki being sheriff and Hopewell judge. All went merry as a marriage bell—with a few variations—until just after the holler of “Lynch him!” smote the air. Then that frock-coated, weird and unknowable stranger, who had boarded at the hotel all this while, addressed the court with diffidence and timidity.
“Your Honor, may I have permission to say a few words?” he asked.
“Oh—I suppose so,” said his Honor. “Only be short.”
The stranger removed his eye-glasses and polished them while he looked over the crowd with a benignant smile.
“Pardon me, gentlemen, if I detain you a moment. Let us forget this bum and your monkey business. I have been much pained to overhear the comments of some of your number upon myself. You boys are so frank and fearless and free”—another oily smile—“and are careless, perhaps, of giving another pain.”
He lowered his voice confidentially. “Now this pained me more, as you hit very close to fact. I was once an abandoned and ungodly man—but I have been shown the error of my ways, and now it is my firm intention to become a missionary.” He put the glasses in his breast-pocket, slow, thrust the handkerchief under his coat-tails, slow—and produced two cannon too quick for eye-sight—nothing but a flash.