'twas a
cassowary, mebbe 'twas a dodo--the man himself didn't know--said
even the hen that hatched it didn't seem to know. 'Pologized to me
for asking me two dollars for it, and I gave him five. I hope it will
go back where it come from. It hurt my eyes to look at it. But it
was a good bargain!" He patted his breast pocket.

"Come over to-morrow," he called to the Cap'n as he drove away. "I
sha'n't have so much on my mind, and I'll be a little more sociable!
Listen to that bagpipe selection!"

Behind them they heard the whining drone of a man's pleading voice
and a woman's shrill, insistent tones, a monotony of sound flowing
on--and on--and on!

XI

The president of the "Smyrna Agricultural Fair and Gents' Driving
Association" had been carrying something on his mind throughout the
meeting of the trustees of the society--the last meeting before the
date advertised for the fair. And now, not without a bit of
apprehensiveness, he let it out.

"I've invited the Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford to act as the
starter and one of the judges of the races," he announced.

Trustee Silas Wallace, superintendent of horses, had put on his hat.
Now he took it off again.

"What!" he almost squalled.

"You see," explained the president, with eager conciliatoriness,
"we've only got to scratch his back just a little to have him--"

"Why, 'Kittle-belly' Bickford don't know no more about hoss-trottin'
than a goose knows about the hard-shell Baptist doctrine," raved
Wallace, his little eyes popping like marbles.

"I don't like to hear a man that's done so much for his native town
called by any such names," retorted the president, ready to show
temper himself, to hide his embarrassment. "He's come back here
and--"

Trustee Wallace now stood up and cracked his bony knuckles on the
table, his weazened face puckered with angry ridges.

"I don't need to have a printed catalogue of what Jabe Bickford has
done for this town. And I don't need to be told what he's done it
for. He's come back from out West, where he stole more money than
he knew what to do with, and--"

"I protest!" cried President Thurlow Kitchen. "When you say that the
Honer'ble J. Percival Bickford has stolen--"

"Well, promoted gold-mines, then! It's only more words to say the
same thing. And he's back here spendin' his loose change for daily
doses of hair-oil talk fetched to him by the beggin' old suckers of
this place."

"I may be a beggin' old sucker