in the barn, and that the matter could be
satisfactorily explained to the goat, Mr. Crossman put the other leg in
his trousers, took a cistern pole and went to the front. The goat saw
him coming, and rushed out into the yard and stood up on its hind feet
and gave the grand hailing sign of distress, and as Mr. Cross-man turned
to see if any of the neighbors were up, he felt an earthquake strike
him a little below where he had his suspenders tied around his body. Mr.
Crossman repeated a portion of the beautiful Easter service and climbed
up on an ash barrel, where he stood poking the goat on the ear with the
cistern pole, when Mr. Crombie, who lives hard by. and who had come out
to split some kindling wood, appeared on the scene.

Mr. Crombie is a man who grasps a situation at once, and though he is a
man who deliberates much on any great undertaking, when he saw the lady
behind the coal box, and Mr. Crossman on the ash barrel, he felt that
there was need of a great mind right there, and he took his with him
over the fence, in company with a barrel stave and a hatchet. He told
Crossman that there was only one way to deal with a goat, and that was
to be firm and look him right in the eye. He said Sep. Wintermute, at
Whitewater, once had a goat that used to drive the boys all around, but
he could do anything with him, by looking him in the eye.

He walked toward the goat, with "his eyes sot," and Mr. Crossman says
one spell he thought, by the way the goat looked sheepish, that Crombie
was a regular lion tamer, but just as he was about to paralyze the
animal, Mr. Crombie caught the strings of his drawers, which were
dragging on the ground, in the nails of a barrel hoop, and as he stooped
down to untangle them the goat kicked him with his head, at a point
about two chains and three links in a northwesterly direction from the
small of his back. Crombie gave a sigh, said, "I die by the hand of an
assassin," and jumped up on a wagon, with the barrel stave and hatchet,
and the hoop tangled in his legs.

The goat had three of them treed, and was looking for other worlds
to conquer, when Mr. Nowell, who was out for a walk, saw the living
statues, and came in to hear the news. Mr. Crossmair said he didn't know
what had got into the goat, unless it was a tin pail or a lawn mower
that was in the barn, but he was evidently mad, and he advised Mr.
No-well to go for the police.

Nowell said a man that had raised cub bears had no righ