elf round her neck.

"No, not when he has had his powders," she replied. "Sometimes, when he
is waking up, I have to be a little careful not to let him get clean
round me, or he'd give me a squeeze."

The old man and the educated dogs had just finished their performance
when we came in, and so we went over to the platform on the other side
of the tent, where the gypsy fortune teller was plying her vocation.

"Cross me palm, young gentlemen," she droned. "Cross me palm wi' siller,
and I'll tell your fortunes and all that's going to happen to you." Then
she, too, recognized us and smiled. "Did you find your hogs?" she asked.

"All but one," Willis told her.

"It was too bad," she said, "but you never will get anything out of the
boss of this show. He's a brute! He cheats me out of half my contract
money right along."

"Where do you come from?" Willis said with a knowing air. "You are no
gypsy."

"No, indeed!" the girl replied, laughing, and, rubbing a place on the
back of her left hand, she showed us that her skin was white under the
walnut stain. "I'm from Albany. I live with my mother there, and I'm
sending my brother to the Troy Polytechnic School."

"Well, did you ever!" Willis said again as, now completely
disillusioned, we left the tent.

CHAPTER XXVI

UNCLE SOLON CHASE COMES ALONG

There was what the farmers and indeed the whole country deemed "hard
times" that fall, and the "hard times" grew harder. Again we young folks
had been obliged to put off attending school at the village
Academy--much to the disappointment of Addison and Theodora.

Money was scarce, and all business ventures seemed to turn out badly.
Everything appeared to be going wrong, or at least people imagined so.
Uncle Solon Chase from Chase's Mills--afterward the Greenback candidate
for the Presidency--was driving about the country with his famous steers
and rack-cart, haranguing the farmers and advocating unlimited greenback
money.

To add to our other troubles at the old Squire's that fall, our twelve
Jersey cows began giving bitter milk, so bitter that the cream was
affected and the butter rendered unusable. Yet the pasture was an
excellent one, consisting of sweet uplands, fringed round with
sugar-maples, oaks and beeches, where the cleared land extended up the
hillsides into the borders of the great woods.

For some time we were wholly at a loss to know what caused all those
cows to give bitter milk.

A strange frea