CHAPTER VIII.

One step further on the right track.

It is not a very romantic locality to which we must now conduct the reader, being neither

more nor less than the shop and surgery of Mr. Augustus Darlie, which, temple of the healing

god is sent it this autumn afternoon, with the mingled perfumes of Cavendish and bird's-eye

tobacco, turkey rhubarb, whiskey punch, auto of roses and muffins, conflicting odors

which form or rather object to form, and amalgamation each particular effluvium asserting

its individuality.

In the surgery, Gus is seated playing the intellectual and intensely exciting game of dominoes, with

our acquaintance of the cheerful Cherokee Society, Mr. Percy Cordoner.

A small jug with Mr. Cordoner's bandana stuffed into the top to imprison the subtle essences

of the mixture within stands between the two gentlemen.

While Percy, as a guest, is accommodated with a real tumbler, having only three triangular

bits chipped out of the edge, Gus and Bibes the exciting fluid from a cracked custard

cup with paper rounded to keep the parts from separating, two of which cups are supposed

to be equal by just measurement to Mr. P. C.'s tumbler.

Before the small fire nears the juvenile domestic of the young surgeon, toasting muffins and

presenting to the two gentlemen, a pleasing study in anatomical perspective and the mysteries

of foreshortening.

To which, however, they are singularly inattentive, devoting their entire energies to the pieces

of spotted ivory in their hands, and the consumption by equitable division of the whiskey punch.

I say Gus, said Mr. Cordoner, stopping in the middle of a goal of his favorite liquid

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