less Bunch agreed to sell the
plantation to Uncle Peter.

The old gentleman had crowded his check for $20,000 into my
trembling hands the night before with instructions to deposit it in
my bank, and at my convenience I was to let him have the deed to
the place.

Well, if Bunch should refuse to play ball I could send the check
back to Uncle Peter, and a telegram to Clara J., telling her that I
was back in the flat, laid up with a spavined fetlock or something.

Uncle Peter was out in the garden planting puree of split peas or
some other spring vegetable when I started for the train, so all
the Recording Angel had to put down against me was the new batch of
Ochiltrees I told Clara J.

I soon located Bunch, and to my surprise found him more inclined to
josh than to jolt.

[Illustration: Bunch Jefferson--All to the Good and Two to Carry.]

"Ah! my friend from the bush!" he exclaimed; "are you in town to
buy imitation coal, or is it to get a derrick and hoist your home
affairs away from my property? Why don't you take a tumble, John,
and let go?"

"Bunch," I said, "believe me, this is the crudest game of
freeze-out I ever sat in. My throat is sore from singing, 'Father,
dear father, come home with me now!' and every move I make nets me
a new ornamentation on my neck. Why didn't I tell the good wife
that the ponies put the crimp in my pocketbook instead of crawling
into this chasm of prevarication and trouble?"

"You can search me!" Bunch answered, thoughtfully.

"And that phony wire you sent me yesterday almost gave me a
plexus," I said bitterly. "Why did you frame up one of those
when-we-were-twenty-one dispatches from the front? It sounded like
a love song from Willie Hayface of Cohoes, after his first day on
Broadway. Didn't you know that my wife was liable to open that
queer fellow and put me on the toasting fork?"

Bunch blinked his eyes solemnly, but when I told him all about the
trouble his telegram had caused he simply rose up on his hind legs
and laughed me to a sit down.

"Well," he gasped after a long fit of cackling; "sister did intend
going out to Jiggersville and the only way I could stop her was to
suddenly discover that her health wasn't any too good, so I chased
her off to Virginia Hot Springs for a couple of weeks."

After all, Bunch had his redeeming qualities.

"I sent you that wire before I took sister's temperature," Bunch
explained, "and I quite forgot to send another which wo