Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/134

 up by the heels, gave him thirty lashes and left him hanging in the air."

"It's a lie! It's a lie!" bellowed Scoggins.

"Gentlemen! Gentlemen! we must not have such behaviour at my table!" exclaimed Mrs. Duke.

And "Hog" Scoggins was his name from that day.

By the end of the week another painful story was printed about one of this group of statesmen. The newspaper brutally declared that he had been convicted of stealing a rawhide from a neighbour's tanyard. It could not be denied. And then a sad thing happened. The moral sentiment of the little community could not endure the strain. It suddenly collapsed. They laughed at these incidents of the sad past and agreed that they were jokes. They began to call each other James "Mileage," "Hog" Scoggins, and "Rawhide" in the friendliest way, and dared a scornful world to make them feel ashamed of anything!

But the Rev. Ezra Perkins was pained by this breakdown. He felt that being safely removed two thousand miles from his own past, he might hope for a future.

"Mrs. Duke," he complained to his landlady, "I will have to ask you to give me a room to myself. I'll pay double. I want quiet where I can read my Bible and meditate occasionally."

"Certainly Mr. Perkins, if you are willing to pay for it."

It was so arranged. But this assumption of moral superiority by Perkins grieved "Mileage," "Hog" and "Rawhide," and a coolness sprang up between them, until they found Ezra one night in his place of meditation dead drunk and his room on fire. He had gone to sleep in his chair with his empty bottle by his side, and knocked the candle over on the bed. Then they agreed that forever after they would all stand together, shoulder to