s of a four-in-hand.

"_Git_ up!"

The coach moved away--slowly at first--from the front door of the large,
rectangular, unpainted Red Owl Hotel, dragging its wheels heavily through
the soft turf of a Main street from which the cotton-wood trees had been
cut down, but in which the stumps were still standing, and which remained
as innocent of all pavement as when, three years before, the chief whose
name it bore, loaded his worldly goods upon the back of his oldest and
ugliest wife, slung his gun over his shoulder, and started mournfully
away from the home of his fathers, which he, shiftless fellow, had
bargained away to the white man for an annuity of powder and blankets,
and a little money, to be quickly spent for whisky. And yet, I might add
digressively, there is comfort in the saddest situations. Even the
venerable Red Owl bidding adieu to the home of his ancestors found solace
in the sweet hope of returning under favorable circumstances to scalp the
white man's wife and children.

"Git up, thair! G'lang!" The long whip swung round and cracked
threateningly over the haunches of the leaders, making them start
suddenly as the coach went round a corner and dipped into a hole at the
same instant, nearly throwing the driver, and the passenger who was
enjoying the outride with him, from their seats.

"What a hole!" said the passenger, a studious-looking young man, with an
entomologist's tin collecting-box slung over his shoulders.

The driver drew a long breath, moistened his lips, and said in a cool and
aggravatingly deliberate fashion:

"That air blamed pollywog puddle sold las' week fer tew thaousand."

[Illustration: THE SUPERIOR BEING.]

"Dollars?" asked the young man.

Jim gave him an annihilating look, and queried: "Didn' think I meant tew
thaousand acorns, did ye?"

"It's an awful price," said the abashed passenger, speaking as one might
in the presence of a superior being.

Jim was silent awhile, and then resumed in the same slow tone, but with
something of condescension mixed with it:

"Think so, do ye? Mebbe so, stranger. Fool what bought that tadpole lake
done middlin' well in disposin' of it, how-sumdever."

Here the Superior Being came to a dead pause, and waited to be
questioned.

"How's that?" asked the young man.

After a proper interval of meditation, Jim said: "Sol' it this week. Tuck
jest twice what he invested in his frog-fishery."

"Four thousand?" said the passenger with an inqui