Accordingly I proceeded to the hotel at an early hour in the morning, intending not to seek an interview with him till after breakfast, and while waiting in the bar-room I overheard the following conversation. For convenience' sake I will indicate the different speakers by letters of the alphabet. Mr. _A._ (to C. just entering the room.)--"Good morning, Mr. C. Are you 'armed and equipped as the law directs' to go over to F?" (a neighboring town.) _C._--"You mean by that, I suppose, whether I have laid in enough cigars to last till I get there, and patience enough to hold out till I can get back." _A._--"It will be a tedious business, that's a fact. Here's nobody knows how many going over from this town; no end to the witnesses, and no end to the case, _I_ don't believe; at least not this term of court." "Yes," broke in a rough-looking bystander, "the court'll set and set, and never hatch out nothin' but a parcel of goslins for the lawyers to pluck." _A._--"We can't dispute you, L., for you've been one of those same 'goslins,' I believe." _L._--"No I haint, I've been a darned sight wuss,--a great goose. I swow it makes me mad with myself whenever I think on't." "Come, daddy L.," spoke up a free and easy specimen of Young America, "tell us about that great law-suit of yours. I never heard all the particulars." "Wal, young man," returned L. solemnly, "I'll tell you all about it, hopin' it'll be a warnin' to you never to have nothin' to do with the law. "About fifteen, mebbe sixteen year ago, afore you'd got through hollerin arter your mammy, I used to keep considerable of a lot of sheep, and one year I bought a ram that I'd taken a fancy to jest because he was sech an all-fired big feller, and had sech thunderin' curly horns. I got him pretty cheap, and arter I'd had him awhile, I found out the reason on't. He was the darndest buttin', jumpin' feller that ever _I_ see. There couldn't a calf nor a colt nor nothin' about his size come into the pastur where he was, but what he'd be arter it and knock it into a cocked hat if he could git a lick at it. Fact, he pretty much killed two or three likely calves that I had, but the colts was mostly too lively for him. He couldn't often hit 'em. "Wal, I kinder hated to kill the feller, he was such a buster, so I shet him up in a little three-cornered lot so's to have him out of the way till the calves was killed off or had got bigger. But what did the rascal du but go to buttin' agin the stone wall that kep him out of neighbor Bliss's patch o' rye; and afore he'd bin there tew days, he knocked a hole in't and got into the rye. It was a kinder out of the way place where the lot was, so he had a chance to stay there all night, and 'praps a little longer. Anyhow, when Bliss found it out, he was hoppin' mad.