he throws out his hand and ketches hold o’ the form to steady himself, when Spoffrel just runs the form and the hand under the press and down with the lever!  And that held the feller fast as grim death!  And when at last he begs off, and Spoff lets him loose, the hull o’ that ’ere lampooning article he objected to was printed right onto the skin o’ his hand!  Fact, and it wouldn’t come off, either.”

“Gosh, but I’d like to hev seen it,” said the printer.  “There ain’t any chance, I reckon, o’ such a sight here.  The boss don’t take no risks lampoonin’, and he” (the editor knew he was being indicated by some unseen gesture of the unseen workman) “ain’t that style.”

“Ye never kin tell,” said the foreman didactically, “what might happen!  I’ve known editors to get into a fight jest for a little innercent bedevilin’ o’ the opposite party.  Sometimes for a misprint.  Old man Pritchard of the ‘Argus’ oncet had a hole blown through his arm because his proofreader had called Colonel Starbottle’s speech an ‘ignominious’ defense, when the old man hed written ‘ingenuous’ defense.”

The editor paused in his proof-reading.  He had just come upon the sentence:  “We cannot congratulate Liberty Hill—­in its superior elevation—­upon the ignominious silence of the representative of all Calaveras when this infamous Bill was introduced.”  He referred to his copy.  Yes!  He had certainly written “ignominious,”—­that was what his informants had suggested.  But was he sure they were right?  He had a vague recollection, also, that the representative alluded to—­Senator Bradley—­had fought two duels, and was a “good” though somewhat impulsive shot!  He might alter the word to “ingenuous” or “ingenious,” either would be finely sarcastic, but then—­there was his foreman, who would detect it!  He would wait until he had finished the entire article.  In that occupation he became oblivious of the next room, of a silence, a whispered conversation, which ended with a rapping at the door and the appearance of the foreman in the doorway.

“There’s a man in the office who wants to see the editor,” he said.

“Show him in,” replied the editor briefly.  He was, however, conscious that there was a singular significance in his foreman’s manner, and an eager apparition of the other printer over the foreman’s shoulder.

“He’s carryin’ a shot-gun, and is a man twice as big as you be,” said the foreman gravely.

The editor quickly recalled his own brief and as yet blameless record in the “Clarion.”  “Perhaps,” he said tentatively, with a gentle smile, “he’s looking for Captain Brush” (the absent editor).

“I told him all that,” said the foreman grimly, “and he said he wanted to see the man in charge.”

In proportion as the editor’s heart sank his outward crest arose.  “Show him in,” he said loftily.

“We kin keep him out,” suggested the foreman, lingering a moment; “me and him,” indicating the expectant printer behind him, “is enough for that.”