"Same price as them cheap medicines--dollar a bottle--big bottles, too. Want one?" "Wal, mother ain't to home, an' I don't know as she'd like this kind. We ain't been sick f'r years. Still, they's no tellin'," he added, seeing the answer to his objection in the agent's eyes. "Times is purty close too, with us, y' see; we've jest built that stable--" "Say I'll tell yeh what I'll do," said the stranger, waking up and speaking in a warmly generous tone. "I'll give you ten bottles of the bitter if you'll let me paint a sign on that barn. It won't hurt the barn a bit, and if you want 'o you can paint it out a year from date. Come, what d'ye say?" "I guess I hadn't better." The agent thought that Uncle Ethan was after more pay, but in reality he was thinking of what his little old wife would say. "It simply puts a family bitter in your home that may save you fifty dollars this comin' fall. You can't tell." Just what the man said after that Uncle Ethan didn't follow. His voice had a confidential purring sound as he stretched across the wagon-seat and talked on, eyes half shut. He straightened up at last, and concluded in the tone of one who has carried his point: "So! If you didn't want to use the whole twenty-five bottles y'rself, why! sell it to your neighbors. You can get twenty dollars out of it easy, and still have five bottles of the best family bitter that ever went into a bottle." It was the thought of this opportunity to get a buffalo-skin coat that consoled Uncle Ethan as he saw the hideous black letters appearing under the agent's lazy brush. It was the hot side of the barn, and painting was no light work. The agent was forced to mop his forehead with his sleeve. "Say, hain't got a cooky or anything, and a cup o' milk, handy?" he said at the end of the first enormous word, which ran the whole length of the barn. Uncle Ethan got him the milk and cooky, which he ate with an exaggeratedly dainty action of his fingers, seated meanwhile on the staging which Uncle Ripley had helped him to build. This lunch infused new energy into him, and in a short time "Dodd's Family Bitters, Best in the Market," disfigured the sweet-smelling pine boards. Ethan was eating his self-obtained supper of bread and milk when his wife came home. "Who's been a-paintin' on that barn?" she demanded, her bead-like eyes flashing, her withered little face set in an ominous frown. "Ethan Ripley, what you been doin'?" "Nawthin'," he replied feebly. "Who painted that sign on there?" "A man come along an' he wanted to paint that on there, and I let 'im; and it's my barn anyway. I guess I can do what I'm a min' to with it," he ended, defiantly; but his eyes wavered. Mrs. Ripley ignored the defiance. "What under the sun p'sessed you to do such a thing as that, Ethan Ripley? I declare I don't see! You git fooler an' fooler ev'ry day you live, I do believe." Uncle Ethan attempted a defence. "Wal, he paid me twenty-five dollars f'r it, anyway."