“Now Bill Hooker hed ben to Horrisburg that summer an’ got him a brown cady hat. That was a new kind o’ headgear ’round Kishikoquillas an’ it cot on wonderful well. All the boys ’lowed they’d git ’em, but tell they had a chancet o’ buyin’ one they got to depend on Bill fer the loan o’ hisn ’hen they was goin’ out shinin’. So Hooker wasn’t s’prised one night ’hen Borax Bumbletree drove up to his placet an’ ’lowed mebbe Hooker mightn’t like to loan him his cady, ez he was goin’ callin’. Bill allus was obligin’ an’ thot no harm ’hen he watched Borax a-drivin’ away with his cady settin’ way up on top o’ his head. Bumbletree hitched his buckboard to a saplin’ on the edge o’ Pet Parsley’s clearin’. Then he got his horn out from in under the seat, fixed himself on a stump ’bout fifty feet from the house, put up his music marks so the moonlight shone on ’em, an’ begin to play. He started the serynade with ‘Soft th’oo the Eventide,’ that bein’ sentymental an’ his most famil’ar piece. He put his whole heart into the work an’ was soon blowin’ time an’ pitch an’ ups an’ downs all at oncet. The lamp that hed ben settin’ in the windy went out--that was all to show he’d ben heard. He blowed ‘Pull fer the Shore, Sailor.’ No sign o’ life in the house. He blowed ‘The Star Spangled Banner.’ Still no sign. He then begin all over agin with ‘Soft th’oo the Eventide.’ Be this time the whole chicken-house hed j’ined in, an’ the cows was takin’ a hand too. He was desp’rit, dissypinted fearful an’ all used up. So he went home. “You take a reg’lar thief. He knows they’s only one eend to thievin’--jail. An’ he’ll keep on stealin’ tell he gits there. Take a reg’lar murderer. He knows they’s only one eend to murder--the galluses; yit he’ll continyer murderin’ tell he gits there. So it is with a reg’lar man. He knows they’s only one result o’ bein’ in lawv--to be merried or git the mitten. An’ yit he’ll keep right on tell he gits one or the other. So it was with Borax Bumbletree. He hed no reason to think he’d git anything but the mitten, yit he went right up to Pet Parsley’s next night to take his punishment. He tol’ me that day that he guesst his serynade hed spoiled all the chancet he ever had, but he wanted it over. “So he was kind o’ sheepish an’ hang-dog ’hen he’d sayd good evenin’ to the widdy an’ set down melancholy like, on the wood-box. They was quiet a piecet. “Then he sayd, ‘I hear ye hed some music up here last night.’ “He was jest fishin’. “‘Did I!’ sais she, flarin’ up. ‘Well, I guesst I did. An’ the chickens was so stirred up they kep’ on all night an’ not a wink o’ sleep did we git in this house. I never heerd sech bass-horn blowin’.’ “Borax jest hung his head an’ shuffled his feet. “The widdy spoke up agin. ‘Does you ever see Bill Hooker?’ “‘Oncet in a long while,’ Borax answers. “‘Well, you tell him,’ she sais, ‘that next time he comes up here to serynade me to send notice so I can git over the other side the mo’ntain.’