There was one, a little dark-moustached Spaniard, who was listening and peering at him, with eyes black and pointed as a chincapin, and, murmuring softly in Spanish, turned and went away.  “What did that d——­d black-muzzled whelp say?” Larry asked.  “I don’t understand their d——­d lingo.”  An unobtrusive individual in the background translated it for him.  He said:  “He who strikes with the tongue, should always be ready to guard with the hands!” “What in the h—–­ does he mean by that?” asked Larry. “Je ne sais pas!” said one whom Larry remembered to have seen in the tiger’s den, and apparently familiar there, for he had been on the wrong side of the table.

“I suppose they mean to shoot me.”  The Frenchman shrugged his shoulders most knowingly.  Larry grew pale, and walked from the lobby to his seat.  Here he knew he was safe.  He laid his head in his palm, and rested it there for many minutes.  At last, he said sharply:  “Let them shoot, and be d——­d.”

The committee was announced.  Larry, who was the chairman, and two from the House, constituted this important committee.  One of these loved fun, and never lost an opportunity to have it.  The meeting of the committee soon took place, and the chairman insisted that the first named on the part of the House should draft the bill.  This was the wag.  He saw Larry was frightened, and peremptorily refused, declaring it was the chairman’s duty.  “I do not wish to have anything to do with this matter any way.  It was a very useless thing, and foolish too, to be throwing a cat into a bee-gum; for this was nothing else.  This bill will start every devil of those little moustached foreigners into fury:  they are all interested in these faro-banks.  It is their only way of making a living, and they are as vindictive as the devil.  Any of them can throw a Spanish knife through a window, across the street, and into a man’s heart, seated at his table, or fireside; and to-day I heard one of them say, in French, which he supposed I did not understand, that this bill was nothing but revenge for money lost; and if revenge was so sweet, why, he could taste it too.  Now, I have lost no money there—­have never been in any of their dens, and he could not mean me.”

“Gentlemen, we will adjourn this meeting until to-morrow,” said Larry, “when I will try and have a bill for your inspection.”  The morrow came, and the bill came with it, and was reported and referred to the committee of the whole House.  On the ensuing morning, Larry found upon his desk, in the Senate chamber, the following epistle: 

“MR. LARRY MOORE:  You have no shame, or I would expose you in the public prints.  You know your only reason for offering a bill to repeal the law licensing gaming in this city is to be revenged on the house which won honorably from you a few hundred dollars, most of which you had, at several sittings, won from the same house.  Now, you have been talked to; still you persist.  There