gh the columns of _The Heart and Hand_. The house stood solitary in
that scourge of desolation. The windows and doors gaped wide like the
unclosed eyes of a dead man on a battle-field. Chugg halloed, and an old
white horse put his head out of the door, shook it upward as if in assent,
then trotted off.

"That's Jerry, and he's the intelligentest animal I ever see," remarked
the stage-driver, sobering up to Jerry's good qualities, and presently
Johnnie Dax and the white horse appeared together from around the corner
of the house.

This Mr. Dax was almost an exact replica of the other, even to the
apologetic crook in the knees and a certain furtive way of glancing over
the shoulder as if anticipating missiles.

"Pshaw now, ladies! why didn't you let me know that you was coming? and
I'd have tidied up the place and organized a few dried-apple pies."

"Good house-keepers don't wait for company to come before they get to
their work," rebukefully commented the fat lady.

Mr. Dax, recognizing the voice of authority, seized a towel and began to
beat out flies, chickens, and dogs, who left the premises with the ill
grace of old residents. Two hogs, dormant, guarded either side of the
door-step and refused so absolutely to be disturbed by the flicking of the
towel that one was tempted to look twice to assure himself that they were
not the fruits of the sculptor's chisel.

"Where's your wife?" sternly demanded the fat lady.

"Oh, my Lord! I presume she's dancin' a whole lot over to Ervay. She
packed her ball-gown in a gripsack and lit out of here two days ago,
p'inting that way. A locomotive couldn't stop her none if she got a chance
to go cycloning round a dance."

In the mean time, the two hogs having failed to grasp the fact that they
were _de trop_, continued to doze.

"Come, girls, get up," coaxed Johnnie, persuasively. "Maude, I don't know
when I see you so lazy. Run on, honey--run on with Ethel." For Ethel, the
piebald hog, finally did as she was bid.

Mary Carmichael could not resist the temptation of asking how the hogs
happened to have such unusual names.

"To tell the truth, I done it to aggravate my wife. When I finds myself a
discard in the matrimonial shuffle, I figgers on a new deal that's going
to inclood one or two anxieties for my lady partner--to which end--viz.,
namely, I calls one hawg Ethel and the other hawg Maude, allowing to my
wife that they're named after lady friends in the East. Them lady f