"Jed, eh? What's your whole name?"

"Jedediah Rittenhouse Pullman. I live down there in that yellow brick
house behind the maple-trees."

"You don't say! Why, if you'd ha' let your name drag after you, the back
end of it wouldn't but just be coming out of the front gate now. Can you
drive cows?"

"That's what I have to do every night and morning. 'Tain't everybody can
drive our brindled heifer neither."

Jed was thinking again. He had made up his mind that the stranger was a
head taller than Grandfather Pullman--in fact, that he was taller than
any other man in the world, except old Mr. Myer, the maple-sugar man,
and he had to stoop to get into his own house.

"You don't say! Well, I'm down here alone, and I've got a loaded team to
drive, and I've bought a cow, and I want a smart boy to drive her home
for me."

"How far is it?"

"Only to Topham. Little more'n twelve mile. I'll send ye home by
somebody. Pay ye well, too. Will you go?"

Jed hesitated a moment, but it was only because he seemed to be
listening to a great rattle of fire-crackers to come--a cow-load of
them.

"Course I'll go, if mother'll let me."

"We'll see her about it right away. You're just the boy I want. Give you
four shillings."

A York shilling was twelve and a half cents, and four of them made half
a dollar. Oh, what fire-works!

Mrs. Pullman met them at the door, and the first word she said was,
"Why, is that you, Deacon Giddings?"

Then Jed knew it was all right, and while his mother talked with Deacon
Giddings, he went and combed his hair, and put on his Sunday hat and a
pair of shoes and stockings.

"Jed's a tough little fellow," said his mother, "and he's used to
driving cows."

She might have said more than that for him. Even Deacon Giddings had
picked him out as the "toughest-lookin' little chap he'd seen in a long
time." The deacon was in a hurry, though, and almost before Jed began to
realize it, he was dancing around behind a very reluctant and rebellious
cow, right up the main street, with his new friend watching him from the
seat of the heavily loaded wagon.

"Ain't I glad I brought Barlow along!" said Jed to himself, again and
again. "He's a small dog, but he just knows how to bark the best kind."

Barlow was indeed a small dog, very fat and very yellow, and with less
than two inches of stubby tail, but he was keeping up a very steady
racket at the heels of the cow. He could hardly have done better if he
had