feeling faint and sick. I found that I had been bitten on my right foot by some insect. I naturally concluded that it was a tarantula. As the foot was terribly swollen, I called to Maitland, who came in breathless, and declared that I had but a short time to live. “Go for a doctor,” I gasped, and in my fright I began to feel the chill, cold hand of death at my heart.

Maitland vanished, and soon returned with a little old man, who carried a green carpet-bag that appeared to be filled with something heavy. The little old man walked as if he was very tired, and as he knelt down beside my chair he heaved a long, tired sigh. His hands were small, but very much knotted, and his eyes were a pale, sad blue. He sat back upon his heels and looked critically at the swollen foot, pinching it from time to time, and sighing sadly.

“Was the lady bit by a tarantula, Doctor?” asked Maitland anxiously.

“Ah, yes,” sighed the little man, kindly stroking my foot.

“Then I shall not live much longer?” said I, with a choking lump in my throat.

“You’ll live just twenty-four hours, unless you have your foot taken off,” he uttered.

The sincerity of his tone convinced me that I must be near the end of my life. I had always heard that the bite of a tarantula was fatal, so I advised Maitland to go for Martin Luther. He would have me sent to the hospital, and I would have my foot cut off. I wrote a few words of farewell to friends and sat, frightened and still, while the doctor bathed my foot with a concoction of stuff, the ingredients of which were vinegar, ether, pickle and linseed oil.

“That will take the venom out of it,” said the doctor, with another sigh, as he opened the bag and drew forth a number of old, rusty instruments. These he wiped carefully on his old blue overalls.

Now Maitland returned with Martin Luther, who grinned as he beheld the doctor at work on my foot.

“Well, I’ll be goldurned,” said he, throwing his hat upon the floor. “What in thunder are you doing, Moll? For the love of Mike, don’t go to poisoning her foot with that old rusty needle.”

“These instruments cost my father a small fortune.”

“Yes, a hundred years ago,” answered Martin Luther, with a disgusted look.

“Tie up her foot, Moll, and we’ll send her to the hospital,” said Martin Luther; “and you’d better be getting back on the job, or you’ll be fired.”

“All right,” answered the little man, with a weary sigh, as he picked up his green carpet-bag and bade me good morning. Meantime Maitland had discovered that I had been bitten by a young scorpion.

“That ain’t anything,” said Martin Luther. “I get bit every night, and I feel better for it. Moll would have cut your foot off if I hadn’t come.”

“Is he attached to the hospital?” I asked.

“Yes,” replied Martin Luther, with a chuckle, “he works for me in the carpenter shop. He used to be a doctor, but he cut a feller’s toe off in Cuba with one of them old rusty knives, and blood poison set in and the feller died, so the medical society won’t let him doctor any more. He made a mighty good carpenter, but the poor old devil has wheels. Maitland, if you call that old guy again when any one is sick or hurt, I’ll have you fired.”

“He cured me of that evil eye that the girl gave me that time, an’ he’s the best doctor in the world,” said Maitland.

One morning it was announced that a new official had arrived to dwell in one of the three real cottages on the hill. It was a short distance from the line of tents. A barbed wire was the dividing line between the tent ground and the aristocratic residential section. The residents of both sections kept well within their respective bounds. The wife of the official must have caught a glimpse of me in the distance on the day of her arrival, for she wrote a note that night to Martin Luther, which read something like this:

“Sir—You will please send to my house to-morrow morning the woman who lives in the tent beside yours. I have not been used to black servants, and I can’t bear to have them wait upon me. I will give her fifty cents, gold, a day, and her meals, and she can have a room on my back veranda. I shall need her at six o’clock in the morning. I hope her character is good.”

This was kept from me, but a consultation was held, and one of the tent dwellers, who had been a lawyer in the days before the Spanish-American War, dictated a pungent letter to the wife of the official, which enlightened her as to the respective classes to which both she and I belonged. She was told in part that the woman in the tent was a graduate of Wellesley College, and had never been obliged to even wait upon herself.

The official and his lady were invited to come to my tent and to size me up and see for themselves whether the woman in the tent was the sort of a person who would make a fancy laundress or not.

On the morning following Mrs. Official paid me a visit, and not only sized me up to her heart’s content, but asked me questions until I thought myself on a witness stand on trial for my life. Then, after offering to buy from me, at her own price, the pretty furnishings in the tent, she departed, and I have never seen her since.

One morning news was brought to me that the little old doctor was arrested and was sent to Chiriqui prison. Maitland burst out crying when I asked him about it, and declared that, as there was a God, the doctor would soon be again free to cure the evil and all the other ills to which black humanity is heir.

ARRIVAL AT PANAMA NINE YEARS AGO.

(PART III.)

HE new official and his wife, to whom I have already alluded, had both been in Cuba during the war between the United States and the Spaniards. The woman had some years before the war had a manicuring and shampooing establishment at Havana, but when the American troops came pouring in she decided to turn her parlors into a barber shop. So she shaved troops with much success, and married a Rough Rider in T. R.’s famous troops of cavaliers.

When T. R. became President of the U. S. A. he gave this particular Rough Rider the only position that he could fill. He was an illiterate man, but he was imbued with a social bug, and he had a dream of becoming a prominent social lion on the Isthmus. The fair barberess was good-looking, vivacious, a good dancer, and a lady of good style. Judge of the surprise of the official pair upon their arrival on Ancon Hill to find that virgin spot was dotted with tents in which lived the soldiers of fortune whom the lady had shaved in the dreaming old war days.

“We sure are in bad,” said the official. “Here’s the whole bunch of chumps that used to be in Havana.”

“Goodness gracious!” exclaimed the lady; “what shall we do? Even old Dr. Moll is here. Now he’ll tell every one that I was a barber and that he lovingly called me the little shaver.”

“If he does I’ll have the old devil put in jail,” said the official.

The presence of the old-time acquaintances had been made known to the official pair by Martin Luther, upon their request to have me sent to them as a servant.

“What—what do you suppose?” said the little old doctor to Martin Luther. “Mike is here, and is now an official. We were all awfully fond of her when she used to shave us. I wonder will she notice us now.”

“Not on your life,” answered Martin L.

The lawyer, who occupied one of the tents, and who was regularly employed as a timekeeper in one of the nearby offices, gave the doctor some good advice, as