I hope you won't do it again."

Ham made no reply.

"Because, if you do, it will come out just as this has," I continued. "I
suppose you feel a little sore about this scrape, for you don't come out
first-best in it. You know that as well as I do. I reckon you won't want
to talk much to the fellows about it. I don't blame you for not wanting
to, Ham. But what I was going to say was this: if you don't say anything
about it, I shall not."

"I don't know what I shall do," replied he, doggedly.

"I don't, either; but, between you and me, Ham, I don't think you feel
much like bragging over it. If you don't mention it, I won't."

"I suppose you mean by that, you don't want me to say anything to the
old man about it," growled he, involuntarily putting himself in the
attitude of a conqueror, and me in that of a supplicant.

"No, Ham; that isn't what I meant. If you want to tell your father or
anybody else of it, I'm willing; but one story's good till another's
told. That's all."

Our arrival at Crofton's prevented any further consideration of the
matter. Ham leaped out of the wagon without another word, rushed through
the front gate, and disappeared, while I drove on towards Riverport.

CHAPTER VI.

SQUIRE FISHLEY.

Ham was quick-tempered, and I hoped he would get over the vindictive
feelings which he manifested towards me. At the same time, I could not
help thinking that he was fully in earnest when he told me I had not
seen the end of it. Of Ham's moral attributes the least said would be
the soonest mended. Certainly he was not a young man of high and noble
purposes, like Charley Woodworth, the minister's son. Captain Fishley
himself, as I had heard Clarence say, and as I knew from what I had seen
and heard myself, was given to low cunning and overreaching. If he could
make a dollar, he made it, and did not stand much upon the order of his
making it.

I cannot say that he put prairie sand into the sugar, or put an ounce
bullet into the side of the scale which contained the goods; but some
people accused him of these things, and from what I knew of the man I
could not believe that he was above such deeds. Ham was an apt scholar,
and improved upon the precept and example of his father. I had heard him
brag of cheating the customers, of mean tricks put upon the inexperience
of women and children. If he had been a young man of high moral
purposes, I might have hoped that we had seen the end of our quarrel.