Dan'l, flies!' and quicker'n you could
wink he'd spring straight up and snake a fly off'n the counter there,
and flop down on the floor ag'in as solid as a gob of mud, and fall to
scratching the side of his head with his hind foot as indifferent as if
he hadn't no idea he'd been doin' any more'n any frog might do. You
never see a frog so modest and straightfor'ard as he was, for all he was
so gifted. And when it come to fair and square jumping on a dead level,
he could get over more ground at one straddle than any animal of his
breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you
understand; and when it come to that, Smiley would ante up money on him
as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and
well he might be, for fellers that had traveled and been everywheres all
said he laid over any frog that ever _they_ see.

"Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a
stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:

"'What might it be that you've got in the box?'

"And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like: 'It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog.'

"And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says: 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's _he_ good for?'

"'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for _one_
thing, I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras county.'

"The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says,
'I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog.'

"'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got _my_ opinion, and
I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
county.'

"And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog,
I'd bet you.'

"And then Smiley says, 'That's all right--that's all right--if you hold
my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller took the
box, and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set down to
wait.

"So he set the