THE RISE OF GINGER GILLETT
improvements ain't no good. Ginger's gradual with everything but an immediate disturbance, and he's makin' law and morals popular where I never reckoned to see 'em stood for an instant."
He turned to me.
"You bein' a stranger, and likely from the East, which lets on to hev a monopoly of virtue, will see nothin' in Painted Rock to excite uncalled-for remarks if it was to occur in Boston. And the man that says different ez a liar."
The rest of the citizens there assembled said Pillsbury was no liar, but far more truthful than usual even in that moral city. And the meeting adjourned. Thereby I lost the rest of the story of the rise of Ginger Gillett till I had had the honour of being introduced to him. As a matter of fact I introduced myself without ceremony on the occasion of Keno Gedge arresting his own son before a killing had time to take place. As the riot happened in the American House, Pillsbury was in it of course, and when I came back from the gaol to which young Gedge had
61