hesitated. The lion might rouse himself if his prey were touched.

"He'll let it go easy if you put your hand to it. He's safe enough
now. There. If we could only get him back from the fire a little, or
his face'll be burnt off of him."

"But you wouldn't move him?"

"Well, yes; we'll try. I've done it before, and he's never stirred.
Come here, just behind. The casters is good, I know. Laws! ain't he
heavy?" And then they slowly dragged him back. He grunted out some
half-pronounced threat as they moved him; but he did not stir, and
his wife knew that she was again mistress of the room for the next
two hours. It was true that he snored horribly, but then she was used
to that.

"You won't let her come up, will you?" said John.

"Why not? She knows what men is as well I do. Smiley wasn't that way
often, I believe; but he was awful when he was. He wouldn't sleep it
off, quite innocent, like that; but would break everything about the
place, and then cry like a child after it. Now Moulder's got none of
that about him. The worst of it is, how am I ever to get him into bed
when he wakes?"

While the anticipation of this great trouble was still on her mind,
the ring at the bell was heard, and John Kenneby went down to the
outer door that he might pay to Mrs. Smiley the attention of waiting
upon her up stairs. And up stairs she came, bristling with silk--the
identical Irish tabinet, perhaps, which had never been turned--and
conscious of the business which had brought her.

"What--Moulder's asleep is he?" she said as she entered the room. "I
suppose that's as good as a pair of gloves, any way."

"He ain't just very well," said Mrs. Moulder, winking at her friend;
"he's tired after a long journey."

"Oh-h! ah-h!" said Mrs. Smiley, looking down upon the sleeping
beauty, and understanding everything at a glance. "It's uncommon bad
for him, you know, because he's so given to flesh."

"It's as much fatigue as anything," said the wife.

"Yes, I dare say;" and Mrs. Smiley shook her head. "If he fatigues
himself so much as that often he'll soon be off the hooks."

Much was undoubtedly to be borne from two hundred a year in a
brick-field, especially when that two hundred a year was coming so
very near home; but there is an amount of impertinent familiarity
which must be put down even in two hundred a year. "I've known worse
cases than him, my dear; and that ended worse."

"Oh, I dare say. But you're mistook if you mean Sm