d take to the woods and kill himself
a-runnin'. Bob Smith! That's whar all your devilment comes from, Simon."

"Bob Smith's as good as anybody else, I judge; and a heap smarter than
some. He showed me how to cut Jack," continued Simon, "and that's more
nor some people can do, if they _have_ been to Augusty."

"If Bob Smith kin do it," said the old man, "I kin, too. I don't know it
by that name; but if it's book knowledge or plain sense, and Bob kin do
it, it's reasonable to s'pose that old Jed'diah Suggs won't be bothered
_bad_. Is it any ways similyar to the rule of three, Simon?"

"Pretty similyar, daddy, but not adzactly," said Simon, drawing a pack
from his pocket to explain. "Now, daddy," he proceeded, "you see these
here four cards is what we call the Jacks. Well, now, the idee is, if
you'll take the pack and mix 'em all up together, I'll take off a passel
from the top, and the bottom one of them I take off will be one of the
Jacks."

"Me to mix 'em fust?" said old Jed'diah.

"Yes."

"And you not to see but the back of the top one, when you go to 'cut,'
as you call it?"

"Jist so, daddy."

"And the backs all jist' as like as kin be?" said the senior Suggs,
examining the cards.

"More alike nor cow-peas," said Simon.

"It can't be done, Simon," observed the old man, with great solemnity.

"Bob Smith kin do it, and so kin I."

"It's agin nater, Simon; thar ain't a man in Augusty, nor on top of the
yearth, that kin do it!"

"Daddy," said our hero, "ef you'll bet me--"

"What!" thundered old Mr. Suggs. "_Bet_, did you says?" and he came down
with a _scorer_ across Simon's shoulders. "Me, Jed-diah Suggs, that's
been in the Lord's sarvice these twenty years,--_me_ bet, you nasty,
sassy, triflin', ugly--"

"I didn't go to say _that_, daddy; that warn't what I meant adzactly. I
went to say that ef you'd let me off from this her maulin' you owe me,
and _give me_ 'Bunch,' if I cut Jack, I'd _give you_ all this here
silver, ef I didn't,--that's all. To be sure, I allers knowed _you_
wouldn't _bet_."

Old Mr. Suggs ascertained the exact amount of the silver which his son
handed him, in an old leathern pouch, for inspection. He also, mentally,
compared that sum with an imaginary one, the supposed value of a certain
Indian pony, called "Bunch," which he had bought for his "old woman's"
Sunday riding, and which had sent the old lady into a fence corner the
first and only time she ever mounted him. As he weig