Colonel Mills is quite an
epicure, and he and Mrs. Mills have a reputation for serving choice
and dainty things on their table.
We returned to the little parlor
after dinner, and were talking and laughing, when something went bang!
like the hard shutting of a door.
Mrs. Mills jumped up instantly and exclaimed, "I knew it - I knew it!"
and rushed to the back part of the house, the rest of us running after
her. She went on through to the Chinaman's room, and there, on his
cot, lay the little man, his face even then the color of old ivory. He
had fired a small Derringer straight to his heart and was quite dead.
I did not like to look at the dying man, so I ran for the doctor and
almost bumped against him at the gate as he was passing. There was
nothing that he could do, however.
Mrs. Mills told us that Sam had been an inveterate gambler - that he
had won a great deal of money from the soldiers, particularly one, who
had that very day threatened to kill him, accusing the Chinaman of
having cheated. The soldier probably had no intention of doing
anything of the kind, but said it to frighten the timid heathen, just
for revenge. Sam had eaten a little dinner, and was eating ice-cream,
evidently, when something or somebody made him go to his room and
shoot himself. The next morning the Chinamen in the garrison buried
him - not in the post cemetery, but just outside.
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