"Did the old man tell you it was _this_ cow's calf?" he interrupted. "Well, no,--I can't remember that he did. He said I'd better take the calf too, and I supposed----" "Exactly--then he's salted you right enough! You've paid forty dollars for a beef cow that he offered to give me for a twenty dollar account he owes me. I'm sorry--dashed sorry--that you've been took in, but--he, he! ha, ha, ha!--but you let on you knowed all about cattle, and I told you to keep your weather eye----" "I can stand being swindled," I shouted, in wrath, "but I won't stand any told-you-so business. You ought to have more sense than to talk that way when--when----" "There, there," he interjected soothingly--"I know jest how you feel. The other day my missis told me I'd smash my hand if I went hammerin' nails with an axe. Well sir, it wasn't three minutes till I did. Of course I swore a bit, but when I went into the kitchen and the missis asked me first how I done it, and then said she knowed I would, I jest went clean out of my head with rage. I'd sooner have gone out and smashed the other thumb than have been spoke to that way." My heart warmed to the butcher; he is a man of fine feelings. He not only gave me twenty dollars for the cow, but promised to frighten John Waydean into silence by representing that I was preparing evidence for a criminal prosecution. "And now," I said, in conclusion, "I'd like your candid opinion about the calf. If I decided to raise it, would it be likely to grow into a valuable cow?" "Well," he answered, gulping in a peculiar, hesitating way, as if he were reluctant to answer, "you mostly can't tell what kind of a cow a calf will make when it's a week old, but if you--if you wanted to raise a _cow_, you--you----" His face became suffused with a dull purple flush, as if he were struggling with a mighty spasmodic sneeze; he turned his face away, his body shaking convulsively, then with obvious difficulty he continued: "If you wanted to raise a _cow_ you'd ought to have bought a--a--ha, ha, ha!----" "Have bought _what_?" I cried, in exasperation. He stopped laughing and looked up and down the road, then leaned over the edge of the wagon-seat with his whip hand shielding one side of his mouth. I hung breathless on his words. "A--cow--calf," he whispered. VII THE ADVENT OF WILLIAM WEDDER