, steadying Mose
against the wall.

"Ah--I ain't got any jug uh nothin'," Mose protested, rather thickly.
"And I never took them bottles outa the stack; that musta been Dick done
that. Get after him about it; he's the one told me where yuh hid
'em--but I never touched 'em, honest I never. If they're gone, you get
after Dick. Don't yuh go 'n' lay it on me, now!" He was whimpering with
maudlin pathos before he finished. Ford scowled at him thoughtfully.

"Dick told you about the bottles in the haystack, did he?" he asked.
"Which stack was it? And how many bottles?"

Mose gave him a bleary stare. "Aw, you know. You hid 'em there yourself!
Dick said so. I ain't goin' to say which stack, or how many
bottles--or--any other--darn thing about it." He punctuated his phrases
by prodding a finger against Ford's chest, and he wagged his head with
all the self-consciousness of spurious virtue. "Promised Dick I
wouldn't, and I won't. Not a--darn--word about it. Wanted some--for m'
mince-meat, but I never took any outa the haystack." Whereupon he began
to show a pronounced limpness in his good leg, and a tendency to slide
down upon the floor.

Ford piloted him to a chair, eased him into it, and stood over him in
frowning meditation. Mose was drunk; absolutely, undeniably drunk. It
could not have been the jug, for the jug was full. Till then the oddity
of a full jug of whisky in Mose's kitchen after at least twenty-four
hours must have elapsed since its arrival, had not occurred to him. He
had been too preoccupied with his own fight to think much about Mose.

"Shay, I never took them bottles outa the stack," Mose looked up to
protest solemnly. "Dick never told me about 'em, neither. Dick tol'
me--" tapping Ford's arm with his finger for every word, "--'at there
was aigs down there, for m' mince-meat." He stopped suddenly and goggled
up at Ford. "Shay, yuh don't put aigs in--mince-meat," he informed him
earnestly. "Not a darn aig! That's what Dick tol' me--aigs for m'
mince-meat. Oh, I knowed right off what he meant, all right," he
explained proudly. "He didn't wanta come right out 'n' shay what it
was--an' I--got--the--aigs!"

"Yes--how many--eggs?" Ford held himself rigidly quiet.

"Two quart--aigs!" Mose laughed at the joke. "I wisht," he added
pensively, "the hens'd all lay them kinda aigs. I'd buy up all the
shickens in--the whole worl'." He gazed raptly upon the vision the words
conjured. "Gee! Quart aigs--'n' all the shic