ck
had Skip. 'Hitch up the roan,' I says to Mike; 'the deakin wants to be
took up to his house.' 'Is that your last word?' he says. 'That's what
it is,' I says. 'Two hunderd, cash down.'"

"Didn't ye dast to trust the deakin?" asked Mrs. Bixbee.

"Polly," said David, "the's a number of holes in a ten-foot ladder."
Mrs. Bixbee seemed to understand this rather ambiguous rejoinder.

"He must 'a' squirmed some," she remarked. David laughed.

"The deakin ain't much used to payin' the other feller's price," he
said, "an' it was like pullin' teeth; but he wanted that hoss more'n a
cow wants a calf, an' after a little more squimmidgin' he hauled out his
wallet an' forked over. Mike come out with the roan, an' off the deakin
went, leadin' the bay hoss."

"I don't see," said Mrs. Bixbee, looking up at her brother, "thet after
all the' was anythin' you said to the deakin thet he could ketch holt
on."

"The' wa'n't nothin'," he replied. "The only thing he c'n complain
about's what I _didn't_ say to him."

"Hain't he said anythin' to ye?" Mrs. Bixbee inquired.

"He, he, he, he! He hain't but once, an' the' wa'n't but little of it
then."

"How?"

"Wa'al, the day but one after the deakin sold himself Mr.
Stickin'-Plaster I had an arrant three four mile or so up past his
place, an' when I was comin' back, along 'bout four or half past, it
come on to rain like all possessed. I had my old umbrel'--though it
didn't hender me f'm gettin' more or less wet--an' I sent the old mare
along fer all she knew. As I come along to within a mile f'm the
deakin's house I seen somebody in the road, an' when I come up closter I
see it was the deakin himself, in trouble, an' I kind o' slowed up to
see what was goin' on. There he was, settin' all humped up with his ole
broad-brim hat slopin' down his back, a-sheddin' water like a roof. Then
I seen him lean over an' larrup the hoss with the ends of the lines fer
all he was wuth. It appeared he hadn't no whip, an' it wouldn't done him
no good if he'd had. Wa'al, sir, rain or no rain, I jest pulled up to
watch him. He'd larrup a spell, an' then he'd set back; an' then he'd
lean over an' try it agin, harder'n ever. Scat my ----! I thought I'd
die a-laughin'. I couldn't hardly cluck to the mare when I got ready to
move on. I drove alongside an' pulled up. 'Hullo, deakin,' I says,
'what's the matter?' He looked up at me, an' I won't say he was the
maddest man I ever see, but he was long ways the ma