That afternoon the Virginian and I had gone duck shooting. We had found several in a beaver dam, and I had killed two as they sat close together; but they floated against the breastwork of sticks out in the water some four feet deep, where the escaping current might carry them down the stream. The Judge’s red setter had not accompanied us, because she was expecting a family. “We don’t want her along anyways,” the cow-puncher had explained to me. “She runs around mighty irresponsible, and she’ll stand a prairie-dog ’bout as often as she’ll stand a bird. She’s a triflin’ animal.” My anxiety to own the ducks caused me to pitch into the water with all my clothes on, and subsequently crawl out a slippery, triumphant, weltering heap. The Virginian’s serious eyes had rested upon this spectacle of mud; but he expressed nothing, as usual. “They ain’t overly good eatin’,” he observed, tying the birds to his saddle. “They’re divers.” “Divers!” I exclaimed. “Why didn’t they dive?” “I reckon they was young ones and hadn’t experience.” “Well,” I said, crestfallen, but attempting to be humorous, “I did the diving myself.” But the Virginian made no comment. He handed me my double-barrelled English gun, which I was about to leave deserted on the ground behind me, and we rode home in our usual silence, the mean little white-breasted, sharp-billed divers dangling from his saddle. It was in the bunk-house that he took his revenge. As I passed I heard his gentle voice silently achieving some narrative to an attentive audience, and just as I came by the open window where he sat on his bed in shirt and drawers, his back to me, I heard his concluding words, “And the hat on his haid was the one mark showed yu’ he weren’t a snappin’-turtle.” The anecdote met with instantaneous success, and I hurried away into the dark. The next morning I was occupied with the chickens. Two hens were fighting to sit on some eggs that a third was daily laying, and which I did not want hatched, and for the third time I had kicked Em’ly off seven potatoes she had rolled together and was determined to raise I know not what sort of family from. She was shrieking about the hen-house as the Virginian came in to observe (I suspect) what I might be doing now that could be useful for him to mention in the bunk-house. He stood awhile, and at length said, “We lost our best rooster when Mrs. Henry came to live hyeh.” I paid no attention. “He was a right elegant Dominicker,” he continued. I felt a little riled about the snapping-turtle, and showed no interest in what he was saying, but continued my functions among the hens. This unusual silence of mine seemed to elicit unusual speech from him. “Yu’ see, that rooster he’d always lived round hyeh when the Judge was a bachelor, and he never seen no ladies or any persons wearing female gyarments. You ain’t got rheumatism, seh?” “Me? No.” “I reckoned maybe them little odd divers yu’ got damp goin’ afteh--” He paused.