let her know
the mare's mine, and the buggy's mine, all but the harness; and I tell
_you_, Sir, I'll see the mare drowned in Charles River and the buggy
split into kindling-wood, before you shall have a ride to Captain
Grant's this day."

"But here's a five-dollar-bill," quoth Chip, displaying a small handful
of banknotes.

_Frank_. "You may go to thunder with the whole of 'em! I tell you I've
set my foot down, and I won't take it up for my own mother,--and I'm
sure I won't for anything that ever was or will be under your clo'es."

With this, he jerked up the harness and went off to the barn, with an
air that convinced Chip that the controversy between mother and son was
not likely to be decided in his favor at a sufficiently early hour to
answer his purpose. But where else should he go, or what else should
he do? As he was a little more inclined now to bet on calmness than on
passion, he decided to take a seat in the parlor, and keep it, at
least, till he could dispose of his present doubt. Easily might he have
measured three miles over the Waltham hills, in the bracing morning-air,
with his own locomotive apparatus, while he had been looking in vain for
artificial conveyance. But if that plan had occurred to him at all at
first, it would have been dismissed with contempt as unbusinesslike. He
must not, by any possibility, appear to Captain Grant to be so madly
anxious to close the bargain. He did a little regret neglecting the
service of his own proper pegs, but it was now entirely too late to
walk, and he must ride, and at a good pace, too, or lose the entire
benefit of the news which the lightning had so singularly confided to
his honest hands. The feeling with which he flung himself into that
quiet, little, economical parlor was, probably, even more desperate than
Richard's, when he offered his kingdom for a horse. It was, in fact,
just the feeling, of all others in the world, to prevent a man's getting
a horse. Had he carried it into a pasture full of horses, it would have
prevented him from catching the tamest of them. But the good influences
of the Universe, that encourage and strengthen the noble martyrs of
truth and workers of good in their arduous labors, do sometimes also
help on villains to their bad ends. Never were troubled waters more
quickly smoothed with oil, never were the poles of a magnet more quickly
reversed, than Chip's rage and rancor abated after he entered that door.
Not that he relaxed his