He wasn't sold to no mule man, fer they
crops the hair on their hoofs to see if they's healthy 'fore they buys.
This here frees Jed."

"And now that you gentlemen have the testimony of a mule, will you not
believe the word of Mrs. Bangs and Miss Powers about the valuable
quilts?" my father said, after he had commanded silence by raising his
hand.

"We shore do believe every word of it, stranger, and you won this here
case and not that mule," a stern old sister in a gingham apron and black
bonnet said, with a commanding glance at the jury.

"Yes, stranger," answered the hoary old foreman, whom to this day I
believe to be the meek husband of the commanding old woman in the black
bonnet. "I have done got the mind of the jury and they all voted fer you
and not the mule."

"I hereby gives that mule to Jed Bangs and my daughter, Melissa, and
I'll knock off a half on the price of his teammate to Jed if he gives me
his fergiveness and hern," old Hiram rose and turned with his hand on
the forelock of the mule hero to say to the assembled court room. "Go
around and halter him quick, Jed, 'fore he breaks away again, the durned
fool," he added in another voice.

"Yes, prisoner, you are declared free, and hurry to ketch him, fer he's
straining ag'inst Hiram," was the judge's sentence, delivered from the
bench as everybody rose and began to stream out to watch the tussle
between Jed and the wild mule. Father and the parson were among the
first to gain the door.

In the next few minutes I found that some of the shy mountain women were
beginning to hover about me, and in another ten minutes I had laid the
foundations of an export rug and quilt business that I have a feeling
will thrive greatly.

"Were you arrested because your mother told you not to sell the quilts?"
was Charlotte's sympathetic question to the young Mrs. Bangs; and I saw
the mite take a clean handkerchief from her small pink pocket and apply
it to the tears that were coursing down Melissa's cheeks over the
dimples which her smiling mouth was putting in their way. "Just be a
good girl and God will forgive you," she comforted further, nestling a
dirty pink cheek, which rubbed off, against Melissa's wet one.

"And I asked if she were totally depraved, less than an hour ago," I
apologized to my name daughter in my heart.

All the way home I sat beside father, and once I laid a timid hand in
his, through whose fingers the pride I had in him must have flowed into