“You’re a stranger in these yer parts I see, and tharfore haven’t the slightest idea what a towerin’ mean man he is; why he’d run a mile to git on the sunny side of a feller to cheat him out of his shadow! I knowed him back in old Indiany. He’s from the same place that I am, but you can kick me clear over to them foot-hills and back ag’in if I don’t feel like takin’ pizin every time I have to own up to it. He used to be in cahoot with a tanner back thar named Doby; sleepy Doby, the boys called him, for he was the sleepiest feller you ever did see. Go asleep while workin’ at anythin’. He would drop asleep sometimes while scrapin’ a hide, and cut the consarned thing all into parin’s; at other times he would fall back into the tan vat, then wake up and holler for the boys to come and fish him out. “They say he dropped asleep once while ringin’ a hog to prevent him from rootin’ up the clover patch. The minister of the village had to pause in the middle of a sermon he was preachin’ half a block away, until the squealin’ subsided. “But as I was gwine to tell ye, before the rheumatism got into his j’ints, and made him shun water as he would a tax-collector, old Shellbark used to be pooty fond of fishin’. One day Parson Bodfish was gwine off to have a day’s sport, and took me along to carry the fish. I was only a boy then, and mighty tickled because I could go. Jest about the time we got to the river we overtook old Shellbark a-pointin’ thar too. When we got to the bank they both set in gettin’ out thar hooks and lines, and then for the first time old Shellbark found out he had left his bait to hum. So he commenced to sputter and fret, takin’ on terribly about it, until Parson Bodfish ses to him, ‘That’s all right; I reckon I’ve got enough bait in this box for both of us, and I’ll give you half of mine, and let us start in and make the most of it.’ So the Parson—who had a heart the size of a sheep’s head—took out his bait-box and gin him more than half. It’s so; I seed ’em when he took ’em out. Pooty soon arter, while the parson was a-standin’ on a log that horned out over the water, a-baitin’ of his hooks, a big-mouthed fish-hawk gin a-chatterin’ screech overhead, and startled him a leetle, and while lookin’ up he let his bait-box fall into the river. “The box was open, so the worms war scattered every which way, and away went box and bait a-flukin’ down the rapids, and the parson’s cusses follerin’ arter. He _did_ swar, by hunky! I heer’d him. He had a mi’ty hot temper, and it was more than he could do sometimes to keep it down. A feller couldn’t blame him much for swa’rin’ jest then, ’cause ’twas a pooty tryin’ time. He turned around sort of quick when he thought of me bein’ thar. I seed him turnin’, though, and let on to be talkin’ to a fish that I was stringin’ on, so he reckoned I hadn’t noticed him. We hurried on down the river, and arter a while overtook old Shellbark, who was snakin ’em out as fast as he could fix bait and throw in.