“Why, darn my buttons!” said Billy, with a look that baffles all description; “ain’t you _driv_ the cross!” “Oh, driv the cross,” rejoined I, carelessly. “What’s that? Just look where my ball is! I do believe, in my soul, its centre is a quarter of an inch from the cross. I wanted to lay the centre of the bullet upon the cross, just as if you’d put it there with your fingers.” Several received this palaver with a contemptuous, but very appropriate, curl of the nose; and Mealy Whitecotton offered to bet half-a-pint, “that I couldn’t do the like agin, with no sort of wabbles, he didn’t care what.” But I had fortified myself on this quarter by my morality. A decided majority, however, were clearly of opinion that I was serious; and they regarded me as one of the wonders of the world. Billy increased the majority by now coming out fully with my history, as he had received it from his father; to which I listened, with quite as much astonishment as any other one of his hearers. He begged me to go home with him for the night, or, as he expressed it, “go home with him, and swap lies that night, and it shouldn’t cost me a cent;” the true reading of which is, that if I would go home with him, and give him the pleasure of an evening’s chat about old times, his house should be as free to me as my own. But I could not accept his hospitality, without retracing five or six miles of the road which I had already passed; and therefore I declined it. “Well, if you won’t go, what must I tell the old woman for you? for she’ll be mighty glad to hear from the boy that won the silk-handkerchief for her; and I expect she’ll lick me for not bringing you home with me.” “Tell her,” said I, “that I send her a quarter of beef, which I won as I did the handkerchief, by nothing in the world but mere good luck.” “Hold your jaw, Lyman,” said Billy; “I ain’t a gwine to tell the old woman any such lies; for she’s a _rael_, reg’lar built Meth’dist.” As I turned to depart— “Stop a minute, stranger,” said one; then lowering his voice to a confidential, but strictly audible tone: “What are you offering for?” continued he. I assured him I was not a candidate for anything—that I had accidentally fallen in with Billy Curlew, who begged me to come with him to the shooting-match; and as it lay right on my road, I had stopped. “Oh,” said he, with a conciliatory nod, “if you’re up for anything, you needn’t be mealy-mouthed about it, ’fore us boys; for we’ll all go in for you here, up to the handle.” “Yes,” said Billy, “dang old Roper, if we don’t go our deaths for you, no matter who offers. If ever you come out for anything, Lyman, just let the boys of Upper Hogthief know it, and they’ll go for you, to the hilt, against creation, tit or no tit, that’s _tatur_.” I thanked him kindly, but repeated my assurances.