animal,"
observed Coble, shaking his head. "If water won't do, I'm persuaded
nothing will, for did not they use, in former days, today all spirits in
the Red Sea?"

"Yes," quoth Short.

"But he ban't a spirit yet," replied Smallbones; "he be flesh and blood
o' some sort. If I gets fairly rid of his body, damn his soul, I say;
he may keep that and welcome."

"But then, you know, he'll haunt us just as much as ever--we shall see
him here just the same."

"A spirit is only a spirit," observed Smallbones; "he may live in the
cabin all day and night afore I care; but, d'ye see, there's a great
difference between the ghost of a dog and the dog himself."

"Why, if the beast ar'n't natural, I can't see much odds," observed
Spurey.

"But I can't feel 'em," replied Smallbones. "This here dog has a-bitten
me all to bits, but a ghost of a dog can't bite, anyhow."

"No," replied Short.

"And now, d'ye see, as Obadiah Coble has said as how spirits must be
laid, I think if we were to come for to go for to lay this here hanimal
in the cold hearth, he may perhaps not be able to get up again."

"That's only a perhaps," observed Coble.

"Well, a perhaps is better than nothing at all," said the lad.

"Yes," observed Short.

"That depends upon sarcumstances," observed Spurey. "What sort of a
breakfast would you make upon a perhaps?"

"A good one, perhaps," replied Smallbones, grinning at the jingling of
the words.

"Twenty dozen tyfels! Smallbones is in de right," observed Jansen, who
had taken no part in the previous conversation. "Suppose you bury de
dog, de dog body not get up again. Suppose he will come, his soul come,
leave him body behind him."

"That's exactly my notion of the thing," observed Smallbones.

"Do you mean for to bury him alive?" inquired Spurey.

"Alive! Gott in himmel--no. I knock de brains out first, perry
afterwards."

"There's some sense in that, corporal."

"And the dog can't have much left anyhow, dog or devil, when his brains
are all out."

"No," quoth Short.

"But who is to do it?"

"Corporal and I," replied Smallbones; "we be agreed, ban't we,
corporal?"

"Mein Gott, yes!"

"And now I votes that we tries it off-hand; what's the use of
shilly-shally? I made a mortal vow that that 'ere dog and I won't live
together--there ban't room enough for us two."

"It's a wide world, nevertheless," observed Coble, hitching up his
trousers; "howsomever, I have nothing to say, bu