eller
took the box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's, and set
down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon and
filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to the
chin--and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped
around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog, and
fetched him in, and gave him to this feller, and says:

"Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his forepaws
just even with Dan'l, and I'll give the word." Then he says,
"One--two--three--jump!" and him and the feller touched up the frogs
from behind, and the new frog hopped off, but Dan'l give a heave, and
hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it wan't no use--he
couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as an anvil, and he couldn't no
more stir than if he was anchored out. Smiley was a good deal surprised,
and he was disgusted too, but he didn't have no idea what the matter
was, of course.

The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going out at
the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder--this way--at
Dan'l, and says again, very deliberate, "Well, _I_ don't see no p'ints
about that frog that's any better'n any other frog."

Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan'l a long
time, and at last he says, "I do wonder what in the nation that frog
throwed off for--I wonder if there ain't something the matter with
him--he 'pears to look mighty baggy, somehow." And he ketched Dan'l by
the nap of his neck, and lifted him up and says, "Why, blame my cats, if
he don't weigh five pounds!" and turned him upside down, and he belched
out a double handful of shot. And then he see how it was and he was the
maddest man--he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he
never ketched him. And--

(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and got
up to see what was wanted.) And, turning to me as he moved away, he
said: "Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy--I ain't going to
be gone a second."

But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the history
of the enterprising vagabond _Jim_ Smiley would be likely to afford me
much information concerning the _Rev. Leonidas W._ Smiley, and so I
started away.

At the door I met the social Wheeler returning, and he buttonholed me