bout; and you won't say
nothin' about her age, will you? it might endamnify a sale.'

"'Not I,' sais I, 'I skin my own foxes, and let other folks skin
their'n. I have enough to do to mind my own business, without
interferin' with other people's.'

"'She'll jist suit the French,' sais he; 'they don't know nothin' about
hosses, or any thing else. They are a simple people, and always will be,
for their priests keep 'em in ignorance. It's an awful thing to see them
kept in the outer porch of darkness that way, ain't it?'

"'I guess you'll put a new pane o' glass in their porch,' sais I, 'and
help some o' them to see better; for whoever gets that mare, will have
his eyes opened, sooner nor he bargains for, I know.'

"Sais he, 'she ain't a bad mare; and if she could eat bay, might do a
good deal of work yet,' and he gave a kinder chuckle laugh at his own
joke, that sounded like the rattles in his throat, it was so dismal and
deep, for he was one o' them kind of fellers that's too good to larf,
was Steve.

"Well, the horn o' grog he took, began to onloosen his tongue; and I got
out of him, that she come near dyin' the winter afore, her teeth was
so bad, and that he had kept her all summer in a dyke pasture up to her
fetlocks in white clover, and ginn' her ground oats, and Indgian meal,
and nothin' to do all summer; and in the fore part of the fall, biled
potatoes, and he'd got her as fat as a seal, and her skin as slick as an
otter's. She fairly shined agin, in the sun.

"'She'll jist suit the French', said he, 'they are a simple people and
don't know nothin', and if they don't like the mare, they must blame
their priests for not teachin' 'em better. I shall keep within the
strict line of truth, as becomes a Christian man. I scorn to take a man
in.'

"Well, we chatted away arter this fashion, he a openin' of himself and
me a walk in' into him; and we jogged along till we came to Charles
Tarrio's to Montagon, and there was the matter of a thousand French
people gathered there, a chatterin', and laughin', and jawin', and
quarrellin', and racin', and wrastlin', and all a givin' tongue, like a
pack of village dogs, when an Indgian comes to town. It was town meetin'
day.

"Well, there was a critter there, called by nickname, 'Goodish Greevoy,'
a mounted on a white pony, one o' the scariest little screamers, you
ever see since you was born. He was a tryin' to get up a race, was
Goodish, and banterin' every one that had a h