The neighbor, who lived on the other side of the mountain, pottered around among the merchandise in search of the sugar and salt, attended only by the storekeeper’s dog, an earnest-minded and grave-mannered brute, that guarded the store by night and seemed to clerk there by day, following the customers about with sedulous politeness, and apparently only hindered from waiting upon them by the lack of adaptability in his paws. His urbanity did not extend to their followers. He measured strength with all the dogs that came to the store. It was useless for any pacifically disposed hound to sit under the wagon bed at a safe distance. The clerk would rush out with a celerity that implied a hundred feet, and the fracas under the wagon would be long and loud and bloody. But he had not all the canine pluck in the Big Smoky, and thus it was that one of his ears was slit, and he preferred to shut one eye, and his tail was but a stump. He turned wagging it vivaciously as Ike came in, and the storekeeper, regardless of old Corbin’s reproofs, said benignantly, “Howdy, Ike, howdy? Make yerse’f at home. How’s the fambly, Ike, how’s the fambly?” “Jes’ toler’ble,” said Ike, taking a rickety chair near the door. “Uncle Ab ez well ez common?” demanded the customer, still hunting about for the salt. He was a tall, straight, soldierly fellow, and though he had fought on the opposite side he felt a comrade-like sympathy for the blinded artillery-man. “He be jes’ ez peart ez ever—jes’ a-settin’-back,” said Ike, with responsive interest. He had great love for his uncle and a special veneration for a man so learned as he fancied Abner Guyther to be in the science of gunnery. “He air jes’ ez lively ez a three-year-old colt.” “Ain’t he a heap o’ trouble ter lead about an’ sech?” demanded old Corbin, turning his crow’s-feet—one could hardly have said his glance, for it was so deeply enveloped among the folds of wrinkles—upon Ike. “Naw sir!” the boy repudiated the idea with a glowing cheek and a flashing eye. “Uncle Ab air sech good comp’ny everybody in the fambly jes’ hankers ter bide nigh him; the identical dogs fight one another fur which one air ter be ’lowed ter lead him—sometimes ef we-uns air busy he walks with a string ter the dog’s neck. Shucks! the main thing air to _git_ ter lead him—jes’ ez apt ez not uncle Ab will set out by his lone self. An’ he don’t often run over ennything—he ’pears ter hev a heap o’ sense in his hands, an’ he knows whenst he air a-comin’ towards ennything like a door or post, though he’ll walk ag’in cheers or tubs or sech. ’Tother day—ye mought hev knocked me down I war so surprised—I kem along the road ’bout a quarter o’ a mile from home, an’ thar sot uncle Ab a-top o’ the rail fence—jes’ a-settin’ thar in the sun all alone an’ a-whistlin’ the bugle calls.” “Ho! ho!” exclaimed the customer, “he always hed spunk,—Abner hed; an’ he air a-showin’ it now, jes’ ez true ez when he sarved in his battery.”