heap, with him still shuttin' off the circulation
in my legs. "Down!" sez he, "an' now the ball is dead."

"I can't answer for the ball," sez I, "but I'm about as near bein' in
the coffin mood myself as I ever get at this season of the year. What
game did you say we was indulgin' in?"

"This is football," sez he.

"I'm glad to know it," sez I, "so that in the future when any one
issues an invitation for me to play football I can make arrangements
for provin' an alibi. If I HAD to play a game like this I should choose
to be the ball."

He was full o' little ways like this an' entertained me fine; but it
was mighty hard to wring any useful work out of him. He used to prune
the rose vines, and now and again he'd do a little dustin'; but once
when I had to bake sourdough bread, I pointed out that the garden
needed weedin', an' explained to him just what effect weedin' had on
garden truck. He sez to me, "My motto is, 'Competition results in the
survival of the fittest.' I ain't no Socialist." When I asked him what
this bunch of words meant, he told me that he didn't know of any
exercise 'at would do me so much good as learnin' to think for myself;
an' that's all the satisfaction I could get out of him. He was some
like other edicated persons I've met up with: when you tried to get him
to do something useful, he'd fall back on his book knowledge, roll out
a string of high steppin' words, an' then look prepossessed.

He was good about one thing, though: he just about took the night trick
off my hands, so that I begun catchin' up with my sleep again. He used
to load himself down with firearms an' he and Fido would hunt Chinamen
two or three hours every night, but he never had no luck. Several times
the neighbors rode by an' they told us that the' was a gang breakin'
into houses an' stealin', but they couldn't seem to get any track of
'em.

One mornin' I was tryin' to find out what made the sewin' machine drop
stitches, when he came runnin' in with his eyes stickin' out like a
toad's.

"He's been sleepin' in the barn," sez he.

"Who--the horse?" sez I, thinkin' it was one of his jokes.

"No," sez he, "the Chinaman."

Well, I looked at him, an' he explained how his suspicions had been
aroused, an' that he had made a practice of stirrin' up the straw each
evenin', an' then each mornin' would find the print of a man's body but
that he had put tar on the ladder without gettin' any evidence.

I pricked up my ears at thi