Now that he thinks of it, Mr. Crossman is confident that the old lady winked as he led the goat away by a piece of clothes line, though at the time he looked upon the affair as an honorable business transaction. If he had been buying a horse he would have asked about the habits of the animal, and would probably have taken the animal on trial. But it never occurred to him that there was any cheating in goats. The animal finally pulled Mr. Crossman home, at the end of the clothes line, and was placed in a neighbor's barn at eventide to be ready for the morning's play, refreshed. About 6 o'clock in the morning, Mr. Crossman was looking out of his window when he saw the neighboring lady come out of the barn door head first, and the goat was just taking its head away from her polonaise in a manner that Mr. Crossman considered, with his views of propriety, decidedly impolite. Believing there was some misunderstanding, and that the goat was jealous of a calf that was in the barn, and that the matter could be satisfactorily explained to the goat, Mr. Crossman put the other leg in his trousers, took a cistern pole and went to the front. The goat saw him coming, and rushed out into the yard and stood up on its hind feet and gave the grand hailing sign of distress, and as Mr. Cross-man turned to see if any of the neighbors were up, he felt an earthquake strike him a little below where he had his suspenders tied around his body. Mr. Crossman repeated a portion of the beautiful Easter service and climbed up on an ash barrel, where he stood poking the goat on the ear with the cistern pole, when Mr. Crombie, who lives hard by. and who had come out to split some kindling wood, appeared on the scene. Mr. Crombie is a man who grasps a situation at once, and though he is a man who deliberates much on any great undertaking, when he saw the lady behind the coal box, and Mr. Crossman on the ash barrel, he felt that there was need of a great mind right there, and he took his with him over the fence, in company with a barrel stave and a hatchet. He told Crossman that there was only one way to deal with a goat, and that was to be firm and look him right in the eye. He said Sep. Wintermute, at Whitewater, once had a goat that used to drive the boys all around, but he could do anything with him, by looking him in the eye.