a
little headache what don't 'mount to nothing.'

But a man who sat opposite to him at table, and who had his clue from
the landlady, said with an alarmed look--

'I say, mister, I don't know it's any of my business, but I'll be hanged
for a horse thief, if your head ain't swelled up twicet its nat'ral
size. You'd better do something for it, I'm thinking.'

The drunken legislator! (Legislator, _n._ One who makes laws for a
state: vide dictionary) believing at last that his face must in fact be
swollen, since several other travellers, who were in the plot, also
spoke to him of his shocking appearance, got up from the table and went
out to the barroom to consult the looking glass, such luxuries not being
placed in the chambers. But there was no glass there. After some time he
found the landlady, and she told him that the barroom glass was broken,
but she could lend him a small one; which she at once gave him.

The poor sot, with trembling hand, held it in front of his face, and
looked in.

'Well,' said he, 'if that ain't a swelled head I hope I may never be a
senator! or sell my vote again at Harrisburg.'

'Poor man!' exclaimed the bystanders.

'Fellers,' said the legislator, 'wot d'ye think I'd better do?' Here he
gave another hard look in the glass. 'I ought to be back in Harrisburg
right off, but I cant go with a head like that onto me. Nobody'd give me
ten cents to vote for 'em with such a head as that. It's a'--

'Big thing,' interrupted a bystander.

'Fellers,' said the blackguard, 'I'll kill a feller any day of the week,
with old rye, if he'll only tell er feller how to cure this head of
mine.'

'Have it shaved, sir, by all means,' spoke the landlady: 'shaved at
once, and then a mild fly blister will draw out the inflammation, and
the swelling will go down. Don't you think so, doctor?'

The doctor thus addressed was a cow doctor, but, accustomed to attending
brutes, his advice was worth something in the present case; so he also
recommended shaving and blistering.

'I'll go git the barber right off the reel, sha'n't I?' asked the
doctor, to which the legislator assenting, it chanced that in fifteen
minutes his head was as bald as a billiard ball, and in a few more was
covered with a good-sized fly blister.

'Ouch--good woman--how it hurts!' he cried. But that was only the
beginning of it.

'Ee-ea-ah!' he roared, as it grew hotter and hotter. One might have
heard him a mile. The neighbors did hear i