"
"I'm afraid the boys won't like it, Dewey."
"Probably O'Reilly won't. As for you, you are too intelligent a man
to be influenced by such a man as he."
All men are sensible to flattery, and Hodgson was won over by this
politic speech.
"I won't say you're altogether wrong, Dewey," he said; "but I
wouldn't keep him too long."
"I don't mean to."
Hodgson returning reported that Dewey would soon dismiss the
Chinaman, and omitted the independent tone which the latter had
assumed. The message was considered conciliatory, and pronounced
satisfactory; but O'Reilly was not appeased. He still murmured, but
his words produced little effect. Seeing this, he devised a private
scheme of annoyance.
CHAPTER XXX.
A MIDNIGHT VISIT.
This conversation set Dewey to thinking. Though he was independent,
he was not foolishly so, and he was not willing, out of a spirit of
opposition, to expose his new acquaintance to annoyance, perhaps to
injury. He did not care to retain Ki Sing in his employment for any
length of time, and made up his mind to dismiss him early the next
mornng, say, at four o'clock, before the miners had thrown off the
chains of sleep.
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