freshin' time_,"' sais I, 'ain't' it?' But he didn't
make no answer. Sais I, 'that's a likely beast of yourn, Elder,' and I
opened her mouth, and took a look at her, and no easy matter nother, I
tell you, for she held on like a bear trap, with her jaws. "'She won't
suit you,' sais he, "with a smile, 'Mr. Slick.'

"'I guess not,' sais I.

"'But she'll jist suit the French,' sais he.

"'It's lucky she don't speak French then,' sais I, 'or they'd soon
find her tongue was too big for her mouth. That critter will never see
five-and-twenty, and I'm a thinkin', she's thirty year old, if she is a
day.'

"'I was a thinkin', said he, with a sly look out o' the corner of his
eye, as if her age warn't no secret to him. 'I was a thinkin' it's time
to put her off, and she'll jist suit the French. They hante much for
hosses to do, in a giniral way, but to ride about; and you won't say
nothin' about her age, will you? it might endamnify a sale.'

"'Not I,' sais I, 'I skin my own foxes, and let other folks skin
their'n. I have enough to do to mind my own business, without
interferin' with other people's.'

"'She'll jist suit the French,' sais he; 'they don't know nothin' about
hosses, or any thing else. They are a simple people, and always will be,
for their priests keep 'em in ignorance. It's an awful thing to see them
kept in the outer porch of darkness that way, ain't it?'

"'I guess you'll put a new pane o' glass in their porch,' sais I, 'and
help some o' them to see better; for whoever gets that mare, will have
his eyes opened, sooner nor he bargains for, I know.'

"Sais he, 'she ain't a bad mare; and if she could eat bay, might do a
good deal of work yet,' and he gave a kinder chuckle laugh at his own
joke, that sounded like the rattles in his throat, it was so dismal and
deep, for he was one o' them kind of fellers that's too good to larf,
was Steve.

"Well, the horn o' grog he took, began to onloosen his tongue; and I got
out of him, that she come near dyin' the winter afore, her teeth was
so bad, and that he had kept her all summer in a dyke pasture up to her
fetlocks in white clover, and ginn' her ground oats, and Indgian meal,
and nothin' to do all summer; and in the fore part of the fall, biled
potatoes, and he'd got her as fat as a seal, and her skin as slick as an
otter's. She fairly shined agin, in the sun.

"'She'll jist suit the French', said he, 'they are a simple people and
don't know nothin', and if they