His factotum, Bob, was to have the conduct of the preliminaries, for those were idle days at the pork-house. The great vats were dry, the pens vacant, Parker's patent fingers for lifting swine reached out beggarly hands for alms. At any hour of the forenoon you could see the rows of porkmen sitting on chairs atilt on the flags. Take a retail grocer, water him well, he buds into a forwarding and commission merchant, flowers a transportation agent, and matures a great pork merchant. Why? I don't know. No more do I know why a livery-stable-keeper always develops into a candidate for sheriff. It is a mystery, a branch of the great Darwinian theory. At eleven o'clock they stop talking steamboat, the chairs come down with a crack, and the stately figures--all Kentucky pork-dealers are large, fine-looking men--troop into the beer-saloon to drink lager and eat pretzels. Bob does not go--he knows Mr. Brown does not want a beer-drinker to overlook his transactions in pork--nor does the major, who objects to beer as slops, and says it is hard on the coats of the stomach. The major has a theory on the coats of the stomach he has never been able to propound, from his agreeable facility in coinciding with any one who questions it. They remain outside to inhale the fragrance of oak shavings in the cooper-shop opposite, and to watch Beargrass glass itself under the old stone bridge like a great green eye and lid. As Walter Brown, Esq., passes out he stops by Bob's chair: "Here, Nettles, I have to meet the Board of Trade at twelve. Would you see to these commissions for Puss?" Would he? Bob enters the street-car with the others. Mr. Brown adds: "Oh, I promised Sue to let her aunt Fanny know. Would you mind--?" "Hm-m!" hesitates Bob. "Old lady's rather uppish--got the scrinctum scranctums 'bout me, somehow: my nose is too short. Beg pardon, but she don't like me." "Confounded old jockey!" ejaculates the irreverent Brown at the inconvenience; and Redmond Ochre, Esq., thinks such language in a prospective legatee should be reported; and it is, and Aunt Fanny rages. These offences, however, were mere preliminaries to that which the unlucky Nettles was destined to give, and which was the true origin of that duel and its results. He arrived at Mrs. Brown's in the afternoon in a grocer's van. "La! if it isn't Bob!" screamed Sudie, rushing out, very fresh and rumpled.--"Why, what have you got there?" "Goodies," said Bob, "and things marked 'L'eau'--'riginal packages. Shut your eyes and open your mouth when the vane o' the church is blowing south. Ain't it hunkidory?" "My precious papa!" screamed Sudie. "Come right in here.--Mamma, here's Mr. Nettles," offering him like a saucer of cream.--"Just wait till I get my bonnet--where is my bonnet?--and we'll run right down to Mrs. Dinwiddie's and get Vixie and Cordie to help."