it aside to wait until her own is eaten. Ho there within!"
he called merrily. "Who breaches our castle when its lord is absent?"

Mercy promptly appeared in the doorway. She was greatly excited and
hastily led them to the rear of the house, pointing with both hands to
an animal fastened behind it.

"There's your fine Indian for you! See that?"

"Indeed I do!" laughed Kitty. "An ox, Jim, isn't it? with the Doctor's
saddle on his back and his botanizing box, and--What does it mean? I
knew he was absent-minded, but not like this."

"Absent-minded. Absent shucks! That's Osceolo--_that_ is!" in a tone
of fiercest indignation. "He's such a crooked log he can't lie still."

"Is that his work? He dared not play his tricks on the dear Doctor!"

"Yes, it's his'n. The idee! There was Abel went and gave old Dobbin to
the parson, to save his long legs some of their trampin' after weeds
and stuff and 'cause he was afraid to ride ary other horse in the
settlement. And there was Osceolo, that for a feller's hired out to a
regular tavern-keeper like us, to be a hostler and such, he don't earn
his salt. All the time prankin' round on some tomfoolery. And Abel's
just as bad. A man with only two or three little weeny tufts o' hair
left on his head and mighty little sense on the inside, at his time of
life, a-fiddlin' and cuttin' up jokes, I declare--I declare, I'm beat,
and I wish----"

"But what is it?" demanded Kitty, bringing her old friend back to
facts.

"Why, nothing. Only when the dominie came home and stopped here, as he
always does after he's been a-prairieing, to show you his truck and
dicker, Osceolo happens along and is took smart! The simpleton! Just
set old Dobbin scamperin' off back into the grass again and clapped
the saddle and tin box and what not on to the ox's back. Spected he'd
see the parson come out and mount and never notice. 'Stead of that,
along comes Abel--strange how constant he has to visit to your
house!--and sees the whole business. Well, he'd caught some sort of a
wild animal, and--say, Kitty Briscoe, I mean Keith!--_that Indian'd
drink whiskey, if he got a chance_, just as quick as one raised in the
woods, instead of one privileged to set under such a saint as the
Doctor all his days. I tell you--Well, what you laughing at, Gaspar
Keith? Ain't I tellin' the truth?"

"Yes, Mother Mercy, doubtless you are. But it isn't so long back, as
Abel says, that you objected to 'setting under' the Doctor yours