While Pate and Wiggins were consoling their friend, they were startled by loud shrieks from a female voice in an adjacent apartment.
"There's murder in the house!" bawled out Botts; and he jumped from his bed and ran to the door.
"Come back, Botts! you haven't got your breeches on," said Wiggins; and he seized Botts by the caudal extremity of his under-garment and held him with a firm grasp.
Shrieks after shrieks were heard, and then the heavy tread of feet hurrying along the corridor. Pate and Wiggins rushed to the scene of action, and beheld the landlord, with loud and violent imprecations, kicking Captain Bragg's monkey out of a room. The creature had got loose, and climbing over the transom of a door, had leaped down on a bed where a lady was taking her siesta. The hideous apparition had nearly thrown the fair inmate of the room into convulsions.
"Get out of here, you infernal imp!" said the landlord, giving the monkey a kick which sent it rolling over and over along the corridor. The agile creature gathered itself up, and with an active bound sprang on the railing of the stairway, where it sat making ugly grimaces, and shaking both fists at Boniface in intense indignation.
"Get me a gun!" shouted the landlord, in a towering passion.
"Don't shoot!" exclaimed Pate; and a dozen female voices shrieked in apprehension of the report of fire-arms.
"What are you doing to my monkey?" said Bragg, hurrying to the spot.
"Get out of my house with that incarnate devil of yours!" said the landlord. The monkey grinned and shook its fists, and the landlord stamped his foot and swore with vim and vehemence.
"I'll have satisfaction for this outrage offered to my monkey," said Bragg.
"I'll give you satisfaction, sir! I'm no Botts, to be bullied by you, sir! If you don't get out of this house, I'll take you by the neck and heels and throw you out, and your monkey after you!"
The landlord was a powerful and determined man. He had fought under Old Hickory at New Orleans. He stood six feet three in his stockings, and could easily have executed his threat.
"Do you not keep a house for the accommodation of travelers?" said Bragg. "For the entertainment of man and beast?"
"But not for the entertainment of man and devil! That monkey is a born devil, sir!"