“Well, I'll be hanged!” he said, and he called around the corner, “Hey, Daniel!” and from the livery stable came a very old man. “Look at this,” said S. Potts, opening Irontail's mouth again, and Daniel looked and shook his head, as S. Potts had done. “And feel this,” said S. Potts, putting his hand on Irontail's hock again. Daniel felt as he was told, and again shook his head. “Now, what do you make of that?” asked S. Potts triumphantly. “I dunno what to make of it, S. Potts,” said the old man, shaking his head. “What do you make of it?” The landlord broke in upon the conversation with sudden energy. “Look here,” he said, “you git that horse around to the stable, and shut up,” and S. Potts and Daniel hastily clambered into the buggy and drove around the corner. “I wonder if anything's the matter with my horse?” said Eliph'. “Matter?” laughed Jim Wilkins. “That's just S. Potts tryin' to show off before strangers, like he always does. He don't mean no harm, but he can't be satisfied to just come around and git a horse and lead it to the stable. He's got to draw attention to hisself or he ain't happy. He's harmless, but he's just naturally one of the know-it-all-kind, and he's got to show off.” There is no man in a small town who can give such a satisfying and official welcome to a stranger as that given by the liveryman, and when the landlord of the hotel and the owner of the livery stable are combined in one man he is better than a reception committee composed of the mayor and the leading citizens. He is glad to see the stranger, and he lets him know it. He has a gruff, hearty, and not too servile manner, and a way of speaking of the men of the town and the farmers of the surrounding country as if he owned them. Having bought horses of many of them, he knows their bad traits, and he has an air of knowing much more than he would willingly tell regarding them. He is not inquisitive about the stranger's business, and is willing to give him information. Probably it is his trade of buying and selling and renting horses that gives him such a flavor of his own, for he knows that the horses he lets out on livery are often as intelligent as the men who hire them. He comes as near the chivalric model of the old Southern planter as a Northern business man can, but his slaves are horses, and his overseer the hostler. He is a man in authority, even though is authority is over horses.