“I have noticed a thing. Be the first to tell a joke on yourself it deadens the blow. Well Honey Wiggin has found out about this so I am going to hurry up and get ahead of his news. Likely is the town here as you know and twenty hours is still the record for driving to it from the railroad but there is a new trail from here to Likely by Spit-Kitten it saves an hour so I am living an hour nearer the fashion than you told me I would be when you gave me this job. But it was by no means to be fashionable that I had to go over to Likely though it is a good place for a man who wants to and this cabin is not fashionable a little bit but my flour gave out. The last of it was eat up by Honey Wiggin who stopped here one night and told me about the trail by Spit-Kitten witch he claimed was easy except in one place by what they call the Little Pasture. You come on the fence on the side hill up among the trees where they have been cut down some and Honey said follow the fence a good ways maybe three miles he thought but not more and you would see the place where the trail took off down the hill through the same kind of trees pretty thin growing and pines mostly till you would come to the edge and see the town down below about half an hour more riding. Honey went over the mountain to Flat Iron and I caught up my horse and started for Likely. The trail was all right unless for a horse packed heavy and I did not hurry any for I knew I had the night to put in in town and I was in no haste to get there because I could have no enjoyment when I did on account of the money. I was invited a lot when I got there but though I have been going to bed the same day I got up for many weeks I was taking no risk. But that is not my point it is the Little Pasture I want to speak of. It got shady while I was following the fence which I struck all right but I did not mind and I was studying up something to tell any folks that might inquire about the money for Flat Iron for I have to practiss lying I am not quick at it like you. Well sir I went along getting up some remarks and then picking out them I considered to be the most promissing but after a while I says to myself it must be most three miles I have come along this fence. But Honey Wiggin is not special close about distances, and so I went along rejecting some of the remarks I had picked out and putting stronger ones in their place and pretty soon I knew I must have come five miles anyway for Japan can walk three miles an hour and I had looked at my watch. I made Japan lope and then I made him gallup and then something struck me like a flash and I got off him and I tied my hankerchef to the fence and me and Japan gallupped like we was both crazy and it was not twenty minnits till we came round to my hankerchef again. I expect the pasture is three miles round but cannot say how many times I circled her. I struck out for myself then and come to another fence and that was the one Honey meant, only he says