dy. The gals thought it prudent to give old Mister
Brown an inkling of their plans in regard to the disposition they
intended to make of Uncle Josh; the old man laughed, and told them to go
ahead, and to duck old Josh, and perhaps they would reform him.

"Now, gals," says old Mister Brown, "Uncle Josh has just this very day
been at his dirty work; by this time he has spread the news all over the
town, that Miller's wife has gone off with Yardstick's clark. I don't
believe a word of his tale, and if Miller's wife ain't really gone off,
Uncle Josh ought to be soused in the mill-race."

Next morning Miller's wife came home; she had been down to her sister's,
a few miles off, to see a sick child; her husband had been away at a
law-suit, in a neighboring town, and so Miller nor his wife knew nothing
of the report of her elopement with Bob Tape, until their return.

Miller was in a rage, but couldn't find out the author of the report.
Miller's wife was deeply mortified that such a suspicion should arise of
her; she had been making Bob Tape some new clothes to go to Boston in,
and here was the gist of Bob and Miller's wife's intimacy! There was a
great time about it--Miller swore like a trooper, and his wife nearly
cried her eyes out.

A few evenings afterwards, it being cool, clear weather in October,
Polly Higgins and Sally Smith called in to see Miller's wife, and asked
her to join them in a little party that some of the neighboring women
had got up that evening, for a particular purpose. Miller's wife not
having much to do that evening, her husband said she might go out a
spell if she chose, and she went, and soon learned the purport of the
call--old Uncle Josh was to be ducked in the mill-race! and Miller's
wife, disguised as the rest, was to help do it. When she heard that old
Josh had circulated the report of her elopement, Miller's wife did not
require much coaxing to join the watering committee.

It was so planned that all the women, some ten or twelve in number, were
to put on men's clothes and lay in wait for Uncle Josh at his lane gate,
about a quarter of a mile from the mill-race. Old Josh always hung
around the tavern, Heeltap's shoe-shop, or the grocery, until 9 P. M.,
before he started for home, and the girls determined to rush out of a
small thicket that stood close by old Josh's lane gate, and throwing a
large, stout sheet over him, wind him up, and then seizing him head,
neck and heels, hurry him off to