He held the
rooster a-straddle his arm, his broad hand on its back, and shook
him under the Cap'n's nose. "I've earnt more'n a thousand dollars
with P.T.--and that's a profit in the hen business that all the
condition powders this side of Tophet couldn't fetch."

"A thousand dollars!" echoed Cap'n Sproul, stuffing his pipe. He
gazed at P.T. with new interest. "He must have done some fightin'
in his day."

"Fight!" cried the showman. He tossed the rooster upon the burlap
once more. "Fight! Look at that leg action! That's the best
yaller-legged, high-station game-cock that ever pecked his way out
of a shell. I've taken all comers 'twixt Hoorah and Hackenny, and
he ain't let me down yet. Look at them brad-awls of his!"

"Mebbe all so, but I don't like hens, not for a minit," growled the
first selectman, squinting sourly through his tobacco-smoke at the
dancing fowl.

Hiram got a saucer from a shelf inside the barn and set it on the
ground.

"Eat your chopped liver, P.T.," he commanded; "trainin' is over."

He relighted his stub of cigar and bent proud gaze on the bird.

"No, sir," pursued the Cap'n, "I ain't got no use for a hen unless
it's settin', legs up, on a platter, and me with a carvin'-knife."

"Always felt that way?" inquired Hiram.

"Not so much as I have sence I've been tryin' to start my garden this
spring. As fur back as the time I was gittin' the seed in, them hens
of Widder Sidene Pike, that lives next farm to mine, began their
hellishness, with that old wart-legged ostrich of a rooster of her'n
to lead 'em. They'd almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the
minit I'd turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot,
left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners--and you couldn't
see the sun for dirt. And at every rake that rooster lifts soil enough
to fill a stevedore's coal-bucket."

"Why don't you shoot 'em?" advised Hiram, calmly.

"Me--the first s'lectman of this town out poppin' off a widder's
hens? That would be a nice soundin' case when it got into court,
wouldn't it?"

"Get into court first and sue her," advised the militant Hiram.

"I donno as I've ever said it to you, but I've al'ays said it to close
friends," stated the Cap'n, earnestly, "that there are only three
things on earth I'm afraid of, and them are: pneumony, bein' struck
by lightnin', and havin' a land-shark git the law on me. There ain't
us'ly no help for ye."

He sighed and smoked reflectively. Then h