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“What’s his name?”

“Bowser.”

“Where did you get him?”

“Blew in here one night las’ month, purty nigh froze–out of a job and hungry. De Missus got soft on him–she’s dat kind, ye know. Yer oughter seen him eat! Well, I guess! Been in a littingrapher’s shop–ye kin tell by his fingers. Say, Bowser, show de gentleman yer fingers.”

Bowser held them up as quickly as if the order had come down the barrel of a Winchester.

“And ye oughter see him draw. Gee! if I could draw like him I wouldn’t do nothin’ else. But I ain’t never had nothin’ in my head like that. A feller’s got to have sumpin’ besides school-larnin’ to draw like him. Now you’re a sketch-artist, and know. Why, he drawed de Sheriff last Sunday sittin’ in de porch huggin’ his bitters, to de life. Say, Bowse, show de gentleman de picter ye drawed of de Sheriff.”

Bowser slipped his hand under the bar and brought out a charcoal sketch of a black mustache surrounded by a pair of cheeks, a treble chin, and two dots of eyes.

“Kin hear him speak, can’t ye? And dat ain’t nothin’ to de way he kin print. Say, Bowse”–the intimacy grew as the young man’s talents loomed up in Muffles’s mind–“tell de gentleman what de boss said ’bout yer printin’.”

“Said I could print all right, only there warn’t no more work.” There was a modesty in Bowser’s tone that gave me a better opinion of him.

“Said ye could print all right, did he? Course he did–and no guff in it, neither. Say, Missus”–and he turned to his wife, who had just come in, the youngest child in her arms. She weighed twice as much as Muffles–one of those shapeless women with a kindly, Alderney face, and hair never in place, who lets everything go from collar to waist-line.

“Say, Missus, didn’t de Sheriff say dat was a perfec’ likeness?” And he handed it to her.

The wife laughed, passed it back to Muffles and, with a friendly nod to me, kept on to the kitchen.

“Bar-room ain’t no place for women,” Muffles remarked in an undertone when his wife had disappeared. “Dat’s why de Missus ain’t never ’round. And when de kids grow up we’re goin’ to quit, see? Dat’s what de Missus says, and what she says goes!”

All that summer the Shady Side prospered. More tables were set out under the trees; Bowser got an assistant; Muffles wore better clothes; the Missus combed out her hair and managed to wear a tight-fitting dress, and it was easy to see that fame and fortune awaited Muffles–or what he considered its equivalent. Muffles entertained his friends as usual on the back porch on Sunday mornings, but he shaved himself upstairs and wore an alpaca coat and boiled shirt over his red flannel underwear. The quality of the company improved, too–or retrograded, according to the point of view. Now and then a pair of deer, with long tails and manes, hitched to a spider-web of a wagon, would drive up to the front entrance and a gentleman wearing a watch-chain, a solitaire diamond ring, a polished silk hat, and a white overcoat with big pearl buttons, would order “a pint of fiz” and talk in an undertone to Muffles while he drank it. Often a number of these combinations would meet in Muffles’s back room and a quiet little game would last until daylight. The orders then were for quarts, not pints. On one of these nights the Captain of the Precinct was present in plain clothes. I learned this from Bowser–from behind his hand.

One night Muffles was awakened by a stone thrown at his bedroom window. He went downstairs and found two men in slouch hats; one had a black carpet-bag. They talked some time together, and the three went down into the cellar. When they came up the bag was empty.

The next morning one of those spider-wheeled buggies, driven by one of the silk hat and pearl-buttoned gentlemen, accompanied by a friend, stopped at the main gate. When they drove away they carried the contents of the black carpet-bag stowed away under the seat.