Said the farmer to his hired man, "Go to the Holler and bring the square immediately."--"That saws my legs off," he added soon after, seeing "Square" Catesby pounding along the road toward the farm with a face of great importance and concern, the hired man in full swing behind, evidently bringing him. Melvine, a fat, lazy farmer--so fat he had lost his voice, probably inside of him somewhere--while dozing away a winter afternoon yawned to such an immoderate degree that he dislocated his jaw. The hired man was despatched to the village for a doctor, and in the course of revolving ages returned, without the doctor. "Where is the doctor?" cried the folks. "He wasn't to hum," replied the hired man.--"Misery to tell! Didn't you bring one? Go back and get one," shouted they. The hired man mogged off, hitched up again, and after an interminable period, during which Melvine cast figurative ashes on his bald head (if they had been actual wood-ashes and "lively" he could not have suffered worse), did bring a doctor. The doctor gave Melvine's jaw a tap: it flew into place. Here pause: trouble no kind heart with the hired man's fate when Melvine regained the use of his jaw. The hired girl's autumn and winter beam with long evenings of leisure, when neighbors drop in for talk, games and stories go round, and spitzenbergs and gillyflowers, nutcakes, cider, and butternuts that make cider taste wonderfully delicious, are enjoyed. In farm-houses among the hills games are played that were known to the hearths of the Angles. "Saddleback" is one. The farmer takes a brand from the fire, saying, "Robin's alive--as live as a bee: If he dies in my hand, you may saddleback me;" and gives it to his next neighbor, who repeats the verse and hands the brand to his neighbor; and thus it goes round the circle. He in whose hand the brand goes out ('tis the hired man, of course, who never can scramble through his verse half fast enough) must be blind-folded and guess what objects are held before him, all he guesses wrong to be placed on his back at the end of his guessing. Then he lies face down on the floor, while kitchen tables and chairs, skillets, pokers, tongs, frying-pans, the bread-board, the rolling-pin, the egg-beater, all are piled on his back; after which he rises slowly and overturns the things with a house-quaking crash which is rather interesting to hear and see. Antique stories that were never written, or, if at all, were written in dead languages that tell no tales at the present time, fill the lapse of the winter evening until it is time honest folks were in bed and thieves a-jogging. Listen to this: it has the flavor of a sip of mulse from a yew-tree keg. It was told among the Druids, maybe, long ago in gray-lit ages a thousand years before the mediæval darkness, when King Cymbeline was building his city of Warwick, and his fair daughter Imogen was having adventures in a cavern. Call it _How Cunning paid better than Industry_.