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I let him go on in his own way, and never interrupted him once: There was a feller here once by the name of Jim Smiley, in the winter of '49 or may be it was the spring of '50 I don't recollect exactly, somehow, though what makes me think it was one or the other is because I remember the big flume wasn't finished when he first came to the camp; but any way he was the curiosest man about always betting on any thing that turned up you ever see, if he could get anybody to bet on the other side; and if he couldn't, he'd change sides.
I knowed a man was a witness; it was a case of horse-stealing; and the man who was the witness was the man who'd took the horse." "And he was witness against hisself!" said Mrs. Smiley. "No; he'd paid for it. That is to say, either he had or he hadn't. That was what they wanted to get out of him, and I'm blessed if he didn't take 'em till the judge wouldn't set there any longer.
The individual retook the box, it examined of new longly, and it rendered to Smiley in saying with an air deliberate: "Eh bien! I no saw not that that frog had nothing of better than each frog."
At the door I met the sociable Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me and recommenced: "Well, thish-yer Smiley had a yaller one-eyed cow that didn't have no tail, only just a short stump like a bannanner, and " However, lacking both time and inclination, I did not wait to hear about the afflicted cow, but took my leave.
Smiley knew almost certainly that this visit was the last she would ever receive from Joe Chillis, and, though she tried hard to seem unaffected by the parting, and to talk of his return hopefully, the effort proved abortive, and conversation flagged. Still he sat there silent and nearly motionless through the whole evening, thinking what thoughts she guessed only too well.
Smiley co-operated to the utmost with us. She never refused to permit any test." Miller here remarked: "I can't but think that our control of Mrs. I cannot bring myself to entertain, even for an instant, the spirit hypothesis, but in Bottazzi's theory I glimpse an alternative."
"You shall have the privilege," was the reassuring answer. "Shall I go now?" There was no reply through the horn, but a tapping on the table gave a doubtful "Yes," and I crept slowly forward and took a seat at Mrs. Smiley's right hand. "I am very close to the ultimate mystery, Mrs. Smiley," I said, as I placed my hand upon her wrist. "Proceed, 'Wilbur. Let me hear your voice now."
Smiley had said, when they talked the matter over in Great St. Helens; "I'd let the barrister know what was what when he came to knock me about." Kenneby wished it also, with all his heart. Mr. Mason went down by the same train, but he travelled by the first class. Dockwrath, who was now holding his head up, would have gone with him, had he not thought it better to remain with Kenneby.
We began, as usual, by putting Mrs. Smiley into hypnotic sleep. In a few moments the familiar shuddering action took place. Her palms grew moist. She said she found it difficult to submit to our touch. She asked us to put our fingers above hers, and soon after, in the midst of our singing, her voice ceased, her hands grew heavy as lead, and lay perfectly limp and dead in their bonds.
Smiley, never an adroit man in society, crossed his knife and fork on his plate, lifted his napkin half across his face like a curtain, and over the top of it stared at my mother as though he were waiting with me to learn just what a bumptious Malcolm could be. My father never lost his self-command.
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