t, lowering the paper and looking
gravely at his companion over his glasses, "next to the deakin's
religious experience, them of lawin' an' horse-tradin' air his strongest
p'ints, an' he works the hull on 'em to once sometimes."

The evasiveness of this generality was not lost on Mrs. Bixbee, and she
pressed the point with, "Did ye? an' will he?"

"Yes, an' no, an' mebbe, an' mebbe not," was the categorical reply.

"Wa'al," she answered with a snap, "mebbe you call that an answer. I
s'pose if you don't want to let on you won't, but I do believe you've
ben playin' some trick on the deakin, an' won't own up. I do wish," she
added, "that if you hed to git rid of a balky horse onto somebody you'd
hev picked out somebody else."

"When you got a balker to dispose of," said David gravely, "you can't
alwus pick an' choose. Fust come, fust served." Then he went on more
seriously: "Now I'll tell ye. Quite a while ago--in fact, not long
after I come to enjoy the priv'lidge of the deakin's acquaintance--we
hed a deal. I wasn't jest on my guard, knowin' him to be a deakin an'
all that, an' he lied to me so splendid that I was took in, clean over
my head, he done me so brown I was burnt in places, an' you c'd smell
smoke 'round me fer some time."

"Was it a horse?" asked Mrs. Bixbee gratuitously.

"Wa'al," David replied, "mebbe it _had_ ben some time, but at that
partic'lar time the only thing to determine that fact was that it wa'n't
nothin' else."

"Wa'al, I declare!" exclaimed Mrs. Bixbee, wondering not more at the
deacon's turpitude than at the lapse in David's acuteness, of which she
had an immense opinion, but commenting only on the former. "I'm 'mazed
at the deakin."

"Yes'm," said David with a grin, "I'm quite a liar myself when it comes
right down to the hoss bus'nis, but the deakin c'n give me both bowers
ev'ry hand. He done it so slick that I had to laugh when I come to think
it over--an' I had witnesses to the hull confab, too, that he didn't
know of, an' I c'd 've showed him up in great shape if I'd had a mind
to."

"Why didn't ye?" said Aunt Polly, whose feelings about the deacon were
undergoing a revulsion.

"Wa'al, to tell ye the truth, I was so completely skunked that I hadn't
a word to say. I got rid o' the thing fer what it was wuth fer hide an'
taller, an' stid of squealin' 'round the way you say he's doin', like a
stuck pig, I kep' my tongue between my teeth an' laid to git even some
time."

"You o