“Yess’r, I had him dead to rights! Had the very letters he’s been writin’ to that other string to his bow. And then to have him whine to the widder that he’d writ’ ’em ’cause he felt sometimes that she was gittin’ ready to throw him over and he didn’t want to git left altogether! Why, the dum fool! To tumble down like that at the first puff she give him! Me? Why, I’d ’a’ lied till there was six inches of glare ice in Tophet! I’d ’a’ said I didn’t know how to write! I’d ’a’ said that I’d been sassin’ Jim the Penman’s grandmother and he was gittin’ back at me. But he jest caved. I allus knowed he was a fool. “And me a-settin’ there with my thumb in my vest armhole, takin’ it all in and fattin’ on the ribs! Why, I’ve heard men git down and beg, I’ve seen dogs set up on end and whine for a bone, I’ve seen a cat coax for milk-strainin’s, but never nothin’ like the way that man got down and rolled over and jumped through and played dead for that widder. “Cap Nymp’ Bodfish, you kicked me once, and ’twas in the face and eyes of the public, and you was due to git a lot of trouble. I might have kicked you back; I might have gone on and broke a few of your arms and legs and et cet’ry. But it wouldn’t have been a scientific job like this. No, s’r, it wouldn’t have been real soul-satisfyin’. I never got no great consolation out of lickin’ a man.” Hiram sighed at his recollections in that line. But his face cleared immediately. “Him with his tongue out and his mouth all made up for that twenty thousand and the widder! Him as had made his brags about her, and now has got to face the grinnin’s and the sneerin’s! It will be lin-g’rin’ agony, that’s what it will. “Lordy mighty, will I ever forgit the face he made up when he see me behind that wistery! O-h-h-h, I shall wake up in the night and laugh till I set the roosters to crowin’. Him a-drivin’ out of the yard with the widder givin’ him a few final lambastes with her tongue and me a-stickin’ my head out through the wistery. He a-tumin’ ’round to git a last look at her and seein’ me and realisin’ then--yass’r, realisin’! And his wheel ketched on a post and he fell down into the bottom of the waggon and began to push against the post like he was tryin’ to shove off a dory--clean forgittin’ he was in a team! Oh, what a state that man’s mind must have been in!” Hiram rolled to and fro on the carriage seat in an ecstasy of mirth. “Never’ll forgit what she said to him then. “‘Take your reins and back up,’ says she. ‘I don’t want people ’round here to think you’re drunk as well as a complete fool, you old hump-backed, tarfingered garsoline tank! A pretty farmer you’d make--and don’t know a waggon from a dory! Git out of my yard and don’t never let me set eyes on you ag’in. I’ve got a man as is a man,’ and she pointed to me, and I swow I couldn’t help it! I set my thumb to my nose and give him the real, old-fashioned waggle. Ow, haw, haw! Ow, haw, haw!”