grotesque lines beneath a pair of little blinking eyes, which seemed to
say that anybody who refused to see that they belonged to a perfectly,
wideawake son of old Adam made a portentous mistake. He was the mountain
peddler, and to-day, at least, his visit was opportune.

"Lasses, here's for you! Look you, here's Gubblum Oglethorpe, pony and
all."

"Why, didsta ever see the like--Gubblum's getten hissel into a saddle!"

Gubblum, from his seat on the pony, twisted one half of his wrinkled
face awry, and said:

"In course I have! But it's a vast easier getting into this saddle nor
getting out of it, I can tell you!"

"Why, how's that, Gubblum?" cried a voice from the crowd.

"What, man, did you never hear of the day I bought it?"

Sundry shakes of many heads were the response.

"No?" said Gubblum, with an accent of sheer incredulity, and added,
"Well, there is no accounting for the ignorance of some folks."

"What happened to you, Gubblum?"

Gubblum's expression of surprise gave place to a look of condescension.
He lifted his bronzed and hairy hand to the rim of his straw hat to
shade his eyes from the sun.

"Well, when I got on to auld Bessy, here, I couldn't get off
again--that's what happened."

"No? Why?"

"You see, I'd got my clogs on when I went to buy the saddle in Kezzick,
and they're middling wide in the soles, my clogs are. So when I put my
feet into the stirrups, there they stuck."

"Stuck!"

"Ey, fast as nails! And when I got home to Branth'et Edge I couldn't get
them out. So our Sally, she said to my auld woman, 'Mother,' she said,
'we'll have to put father into the stable with the pony and fetch him a
cup of tea.' And that's what they did, and when I had summat into me I
had another fratch at getting out of the saddle; but I couldn't manish
it; so I had--what you think I had to do?"

"Nay, man, what?"

"I had to sleep all night in the stable on Bessy's back!"

"Bless thee, Gubblum, and whatever didsta do?"

"I'm coming to that, on'y some folks are so impatient. Next morning that
lass of mine, she said to her mother, 'Mother,' she said, 'wouldn't it
be best to take the saddle off the pony, and then father he'll sure come
off with it?'"

"And they did do it?"

"Ey, they did. They took Bessy and me round to the soft bed as they
keeps maistly at the back of a stable, and they loosened the straps and
gave a push, and cried 'Away.'"

"Weel, man, weel?"

"Weel! nowt of the sort! It