eeply interested in this man. There was something he liked about him.

"What does it sell fur?" he asked, after a pause.

"Same price as them cheap medicines--dollar a bottle--big bottles, too.
Want one?"

"Wal, mother ain't to home, an' I don't know as she'd like this kind. We
ain't been sick f'r years. Still, they's no tellin'," he added, seeing
the answer to his objection in the agent's eyes. "Times is purty close,
too, with us, y' see; we've jest built that stable "----

"Say, I'll tell yeh what I'll do," said the stranger, waking up and
speaking in a warmly generous tone. "I'll give you ten bottles of the
bitter if you'll let me paint a sign on that barn. It won't hurt the
barn a bit, and if you want 'o, you can paint it out a year from date.
Come, what d' ye say?"

"I guess I hadn't better."

The agent thought that Uncle Ethan was after more pay, but in reality he
was thinking of what his little old wife would say.

"It simply puts a family bitter in your home that may save you fifty
dollars this comin' fall. You can't tell."

Just what the man said after that Uncle Ethan didn't follow. His voice
had a confidential purring sound as he stretched across the wagon-seat
and talked on, eyes half shut. He straightened up at last, and concluded
in the tone of one who has carried his point:

"So! If you didn't want to use the whole twenty-five bottles y'rself,
why! sell it to your neighbors. You can get twenty dollars out of it
easy, and still have five bottles of the best family bitter that ever
went into a bottle."

It was the thought of this opportunity to get a buffalo-skin coat that
consoled Uncle Ethan as he saw the hideous black letters appearing under
the agent's lazy brush.

It was the hot side of the barn, and painting was no light work. The
agent was forced to mop his forehead with his sleeve.

"Say, hain't got a cooky or anything, and a cup o' milk handy?" he said
at the end of the first enormous word, which ran the whole length of the
barn.

Uncle Ethan got him the milk and cooky, which he ate with an
exaggeratedly dainty action of his fingers, seated meanwhile on the
staging which Uncle Ripley had helped him to build. This lunch infused
new energy into him, and in a short time "DODD'S FAMILY BITTERS, Best
in the Market," disfigured the sweet-smelling pine boards.

* * * * *

Ethan was eating his self-obtained supper of bread and milk when his
wife came home.