to
his ear, and put on all the external signs of devout attention, as the
chairman proceeded in the long and curious array.

"First, then, it is charged against you, Bunce, by young Dick Jenkins,
that stands over in front of you there, that somewhere between the
fifteenth and twenty-third of June--last June was a year--you came by
night to his plantation, he living at that time in De Kalb county; that
you stopped the night with him, without charge, and in the morning you
traded a clock to his wife for fifteen dollars, and that you had not
been gone two days, before the said clock began to go whiz, whiz, whiz,
and commenced striking, whizzing all the while, and never stopped till
it had struck clear thirty-one, and since that time it will neither
whiz, nor strike, nor do nothing."

"Why, lawyer, I ain't the man to deny the truth of this transaction, you
see; but, then, you must know, much depends upon the way you manage a
clock. A clock is quite a delicate and ticklish article of manufacture,
you see, and it ain't everybody that can make a clock, or can make it go
when it don't want to; and if a man takes a hammer or a horsewhip, or
any other unnatural weapon to it, as if it was a house or a horse, why I
guess, it's not reasonable to expect it to keep in order, and it's no
use in having a clock no how, if you don't treat it well. As for its
striking thirty-one, that indeed is something remarkable, for I never
heard one of mine strike more than twelve, and that's zactly the number
they're regulated to strike. But, after all, lawyer, I don't see that
Squire Jenkins has been much a loser by the trade, seeing that he paid
me in bills of the Hogee-nogee bank, and that stopped payment about the
time, and before I could get the bills changed. It's true, I didn't let
on that I knowed anything about it, and got rid of the paper a little
while before the thing went through the country."

"Now, look ye, you gingerbread-bodied Yankee--I'd like to know what you
mean about taking whip and hammer to the clock. If you mean to say that
I ever did such a thing, I'll lick you now, by the eternal scratch!"

"Order, order, Mr. Jenkins--order! The chair must be respected. You must
come to order, Mr. Jenkins--" was the vociferous and urgent cry of the
chairman, repeated by half a dozen voices; the pedler, in the meanwhile,
half doubting the efficacy of the call, retreating with no little terror
behind the chair of the dignified personage w