ound this here camp that's a heap more pressin'. Now, Leander Dax, if I
do hereby undertake to hire, engage, and employ you to herd sheep, do you
agree to renounce discussions, arguments, and debates on the late Jonah
and his whereabouts durin' them three days? God A'mighty, man, any one
would think you was Jonah's wife, the interest you have in his absence!"

"I come here to herd sheep," Leander had brazenly retaliated. "I 'ain't
come to try to make you think."

Nevertheless, he appeared docile enough as the time came for the journey
to the dipping-vat, and did his part in making ready. The wagon was the
rudest of structures; it consisted merely of one long, stout pole. Though
she saw the horses being harnessed to this pole, Mary Carmichael,
discreetly exercising her newly acquired wisdom, forbore to ask where she
was going to sit, and listened with interest to a discussion between Mrs.
Yellett and Leander as to the number of horses it would take to get the
dip up the mountain. Leander, who loved pomp and splendor, was for taking
six, but Mrs. Yellett, who carried simplicity to a fault, was in favor of
only two. They finally compromised on four, and Leander went to fetch the
extra two.

Mrs. Yellett, ever economical of the flitting moment, took advantage of
the delay to give Mr. Yellett a dose of "Brainard's Beneficial
Blackthorn."

"Paw's as hard to manage as a bent pin," she remarked, in an aside to
Mary, while he protested and fought her off with his stick. But she, with
the agility of an acrobat, got directly back of him, took his head under
her arm, pried open his mouth, and poured down the unwelcome, if
beneficial, dose.

"There, there, paw," she said, wiping his mouth as if he had been a baby,
"don't take on so! It's all gone, and I can't have you sick on my hands."

But Mr. Yellett continued to splutter and flare and use violent language,
whereupon the matriarch went into the tent and returned with a drink of
condensed-milk and water, "to wash down the nasty taste," she told him,
soothingly.

A moment afterwards she and Leander were engaged in rolling the barrels of
sheep-dip to the wagon, Mary Carmichael helplessly looking on while Mrs.
Yellett looked doubtfully at a "gov'ment" who could not handle barrels.
Finally, under the skilful manipulation of Mrs. Yellett and Leander, the
long pole took on the aspect of a colossal vertebral column, from which
huge barrel-ribs projected horizontally, leaving at th