id he laid over any frog that ever _they_ see.

Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him downtown sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a
stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:

"What might it be that you've got in the box?"

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, "It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it ain't--it's only just a frog."

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, "H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's _he_ good for?"

"Well," Smiley says, easy and careless, "he's good enough for _one_
thing, I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County."

The feller took the box again, and took another long, particular look,
and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, "Well," he says,
"I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog."

"Maybe you don't," Smiley says. "Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got _my_ opinion, and
I'll resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras
County."

And the feller studied a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, "Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog; but if I had a frog
I'd bet you."

And then Smiley says, "That's all right--that's all right--if you'll
hold my box a minute I'll go and get you a frog." And so the feller 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 himself, 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 his
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 give 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's, and I'll give the word." Then he says,
"One--two--three--_git!_" and him and the feller touched up the frogs
from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan'l give a heave,
and hysted up his shoulders--so--like a Frenchman, but it warn't no
use--he couldn't budge; he was planted as solid as a church, and he
couldn't no more stir than i