a deal with the bishop and really made some money out of it
in the end. He never was so good a business man as he thought he was,
Doctor Kirby wasn't. He always could make himself think he was. But when
it come right down to brass tacks he wasn't. You give him a scheme that
would TALK well, the kind of a josh talk he liked to get off fur his own
enjoyment, and he would take up with it every time instead of one that
had more promise of money to it if it was worked harder. He was thinking
of the TALK more'n he was of the money, mostly; and he was always saying
something about art fur art's sake, which was plumb foolishness, fur he
never painted no pictures. Well, he never got over being more or less of
a puzzle to me. But fur some reason or other this morning he seemed to
be in a better humour with himself, after we had walked a while, than I
had seen him in fur a long time.

We come to the top of one long hill, which it had made us sweat to
climb, and without saying nothing to each other we both stopped and took
off our hats and wiped our foreheads, and drawed long breaths, content
to stand there fur jest a minute or two and look around us. The road run
straight ahead, and dipped down, and then clumb up another hill about an
eighth of a mile in front of us. It made a little valley. Jest about
the middle, between the two hills, a crick meandered through the bottom
land. Woods growed along the crick, and along both sides of the road we
was travelling. Right nigh the crick they was another road come out
of the woods to the left-hand side, and switched into the road we was
travelling, and used the same bridge to cross the crick by. They was
three or four houses here and there, with chimbleys built up on the
outside of them, and blue smoke coming out. We stood and looked at the
sight before us and forgot all the troubles we had left behind, fur a
couple of minutes--it all looked so peaceful and quiet and homeyfied and
nice.

"Well," says the doctor, after we had stood there a piece, "I guess we
better be moving on again, Danny."

But jest as Sam, who was follering along behind with that suit case,
picks it up and puts it on his head agin, they come a sound, from away
off in the distance somewheres, that made him set it down quick. And we
all stops in our tracks and looks at each other.

It was the voice of a hound dog--not so awful loud, but clear and mellow
and tuneful, and carried to us on the wind. And then in a minute