with his presence.  They put the boy in the front and ordered him to call on the Frenchman to open up.  He said afterward that he put in a word for himself, telling him not to do any shooting through the door.  After some persuasion the store was opened and proved to be quite a prize.  Then they turned their attention to the store where the boy worked.  He unlocked it and waved them in.  He went into the cellar and brought up half a dozen bottles of imported French Cognac, and invited the chief bandit and his followers to be good enough to join him.  In the mean time they had piled up on the counters such things as they wanted.  They made no money demand on him, the chief asking him to set a price on the things they were taking.  He made a hasty inventory of the goods and gave the chief the figures, about one hundred and ten dollars.  The chief opened a sack that they had taken from the custom-house and paid the bill with a flourish.

“The chief then said that he had a favor to ask:  that my brother should cheer for the revolutionists, to identify him as a friend.  That was easy, so he mounted the counter and gave three cheers of ’Viva los Timochis!’ He got down off the counter, took the bandit by the arm, and led him to the rear, where with glasses in the air they drank to ‘Viva los Timochis!’ again.  Then the chief and his men withdrew and recrossed the river.  It was the best day’s trade he had had in a long time.  Now, here comes in the native.  While the boy did everything from compulsion and policy, the native element looked upon him with suspicion.  The owners of the store, knowing that this suspicion existed, advised him to leave, and he did.”

The two prisoners were sleeping soundly.  Sleep comes easily to tired men, and soon all but the solitary guard were wrapped in sleep, to fight anew in rangers’ dreams scathless battles!

* * * * *

There was not lacking the pathetic shade in the redemption of this State from crime and lawlessness.  In the village burying-ground of Round Rock, Texas, is a simple headstone devoid of any lettering save the name “Sam Bass.”  His long career of crime and lawlessness would fill a good-sized volume.  He met his death at the hands of Texas Rangers.  Years afterward a woman, with all the delicacy of her sex, and knowing the odium that was attached to his career, came to this town from her home in the North and sought out his grave.  As only a woman can, when some strong tie of affection binds, this woman went to work to mark the last resting-place of the wayward man.  Concealing her own identity, she performed these sacred rites, clothing in mystery her relation to the criminal.  The people of the village would not have withheld their services in well-meant friendship, but she shrank from them, being a stranger.

A year passed, and she came again.  This time she brought the stone which marks his last resting-place.  The chivalry of this generous people was aroused in admiration of a woman that would defy the calumny attached to an outlaw.  While she would have shrunk from kindness, had she been permitted, such devotion could not go unchallenged.  So she disclosed her identity.