with the drop-sight and double
wabbles."

"Why, good Lord a'mighty!" said Billy, with a look that baffles all
description, "an't you _driv_ the cross?"

"Oh, driv the cross!" rejoined I, carelessly. "What's that! Just look
where my ball is! I do believe in my soul its center is a full quarter
of an inch from the cross. I wanted to lay the center of the bullet upon
the cross, just as if you'd put it there with your fingers."

Several received this palaver with a contemptuous but very appropriate
curl of the nose; and Mealy Whitecotton offered to bet a half pint "that
I couldn't do the like again with no sort o' wabbles, he didn't care
what." But I had already fortified myself on this quarter of my
morality. A decided majority, however, were clearly of opinion that I
was serious; and they regarded me as one of the wonders of the world.
Billy increased the majority by now coming out fully with my history, as
he had received it from his father; to which I listened with quite as
much astonishment as any other one of his hearers. He begged me to go
home with him for the night, or, as he expressed it, "to go home with
him and swap lies that night, and it shouldn't cost me a cent;" the true
reading of which is, that if I would go home with him, and give him the
pleasure of an evening's chat about old times, his house should be as
free to me as my own. But I could not accept his hospitality without
retracing five or six miles of the road which I had already passed, and
therefore I declined it.

"Well, if you won't go, what must I tell the old woman for you, for
she'll be mighty glad to hear from the boy that won the silk
handkerchief for her, and I expect she'll lick me for not bringing you
home with me."

"Tell her," said I, "that I send her a quarter of beef which I won, as I
did the handkerchief, by nothing in the world but mere good luck."

"Hold your jaw, Lyman!" said Billy; "I an't a gwine to tell the old
woman any such lies; for she's a reg'lar built Meth'dist."

As I turned to depart, "Stop a minute, stranger!" said one: then
lowering his voice to a confidential but distinctly audible tone, "What
you offering for?" continued he. I assured him I was not a candidate for
anything; that I had accidentally fallen in with Billy Curlew, who
begged me to come with him to the shooting-match, and, as it lay right
on my road, I had stopped. "Oh," said he, with a conciliatory nod, "if
you're up for anything, you needn't be