As the boys entered the gate, Billy was coming out of the house, having just finished his dinner; he had a knife in one hand, and a piece of pigtail in the other, from which cutting a fair allowance, he put it into his mouth with a manifest relish. Without apparently noticing the boys who were walking towards him, he made directly to a great pile of brush which lay in the yard, and commenced chopping. They walked up to him, and endeavored to catch his eye, but he took no notice of them. After cutting a few sticks, he threw down the axe, and, looking at Jim, asked in a very loud voice, 'Did you speak to me?' Jim shook his head in the negative, and then began to say something about his errand; he spoke, as he thought, in a pretty loud voice. But Billy only noticed his negative reply to the question he had put, and started for another corner of the yard, where lay a heap of farming utensils, and began dragging forth an old one-horse plough. After separating it from the rest, he commenced tinkering the rigging; Jim, in the meantime, trying to catch his eye, long enough to let him know that, although he had not yet spoken to him, he wished to do so. Twice, as he raised himself, Jim made a desperate effort, and called out as loud as he thought necessary, 'Mr. Bloodgood!' But it availed nothing. He stared at him an instant, and then ran across to another side of the yard to a little old corn crib; and jumping into it, began to overhaul a box of old irons, for something probably that belonged to the plough. In the midst of all his hurry, however, he would find time every now and then to put his hand into his vest pocket, and taking out large pinches of snuff, would regale his olfactory sense, and apparently with great zest. The boys began to feel that it was a desperate case, and at the same time were so amused, that they could with difficulty refrain from showing it. In fact, Jim did once or twice give a kind of whine, just the beginning of a peculiar laugh he had, and Sam would go off with a very slight sneeze. As Billy appeared to be in no hurry to come out of the crib, they walked slowly across to where he was. 'You try him this time, Sam? see if you can make him hear.' 'I can't, Jim, no how. I should burst out laughing in his face.' 'I am afraid, then, we must give it up, for I can't get him to look at me.'