expect;--there's consider'ble on't, so I guess
it looks as well to have it gray. But I don't know no more 'n you do
what to do abaout it."

"If I could only get rid of him without knowing what became of him!"
exclaimed Miss Lucinda, squeezing her forefinger with great earnestness,
and looking both puzzled and pained.

"If Mees Lucinda would pairmit?" said a voice behind her.

She turned round to see Monsieur Leclerc on his crutches, just in the
parlor-door.

"I shall, Mees, myself dispose of Piggee, if it please. I can. I shall
have no sound; he shall to go away like a silent snow, to trouble you no
more, never!"

"Oh, Sir! if you could! But I don't see how!"

"If Mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain. I shall have him
to go by _magique_ to fiery land."

Fairy-land, probably! But Miss Lucinda did not perceive the _equivoque_.

"Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel. I shall have the aid of myself
and one good friend that I have; and some night when you rise of the
morning, he shall not be there."

Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"I am greatly obliged,--I shall be, I mean," said she.

"Well, I'm glad enough to wash my hands on't," said Israel. "I shall
hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy;
'n' it's one comfort abaout critters, you ken get rid on 'em somehaow
when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone,
excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He don't allers see fit."

What added point and weight to these final remarks of old Israel was
the well-known fact that he suffered at home from the most pecking and
worrying of wives, and had been heard to say in some moment of unusual
frankness that he "didn't see how't could be sinful to wish Miss Slater
was in heaven, for she'd be lots better off, and other folks too!"

Miss Lucinda never knew what befell her pig one fine September night;
she did not even guess that a visit paid to Monsieur by one of his
pupils, a farmer's daughter just out of Dalton, had anything to do with
this _enlevement_; she was sound asleep in her bed up-stairs, when
her guest shod his crutches with old gloves, and limped out to the
garden-gate by dawn, where he and the farmer tolled the animal out of
his sty and far down the street by tempting red apples, and then Farmer
Steele took possession of him, and he was seen no more. No, the first
thing Miss Lucinda knew of her riddance was when Israel put his head
i