rs like we ain't never fixed for nuthin'."

Jasper went out and into the dining-room conducted the horse-trading
preacher. He shook hands with everyone, sat down, and, hungry from his
ride, began to help himself. "Just married a couple over in the Spice
Bush neighborhood," said he, receiving from Jasper a slab of the brown
bacon. "Yes, the widow Doxey and old John Towson. This is good meat,
brother Starbuck--smoked with hickory wood, I reckon."

"Yes, hick'ry an' sass'frass. I reckon you pick up a good many weddin's
along about this time of the year."

"Well, a pretty fair sprinkling."

"So Miz Doxey finally cotch old John," said Jasper and his wife
declared she wouldn't make light of it. "Light of it? She weighs two
forty if she weighs a ounce. Oh, I knowd John would git her as soon as I
seed him a puttin' them green blinds on his house. Ma'm, nothin' round
here ketches a widow woman like green blinds. Swoppin' any hosses
lately, Brother Fetterson?"

"Traded off a nag yesterday. Didn't know but I might strike a swop with
you to-day."

"Why," Margaret spoke up, knowing that in the combat of a horse trade,
time would sail like a summer's cloud over the heads of the two men,
"you haven't come to trade stock, but to marry these folks."

"Oh, that won't take long," Brother Fetterson replied. "Have you got
that sorrel yet, Brother Starbuck?"

"She's out thar in the lot now, as slick as a mole."

"This is to be a double wedding," said Mrs. Mayfield, "and on the
hill-top, among the vines."

"A right pretty idea, Miss. Now this hoss I'm a riding, Brother
Starbuck, is a single footer, in fine condition and can run a quarter
with the best of them."

"I hearn that you swopped tuther day with Dave Somer's an' the hoss died
durin' of the night," said Jasper. "Is that so?"

"Brother Starbuck," the preacher replied, looking grave, "life is just
as uncertain among hosses as among men. We know not the day nor the hour
when the healthiest hoss may be called, as it were; and I could not of
course foresee the death of the hoss I swopped to Dave. I regretted
his--I might say demise, but it was no fault of mine."

Mrs. Mayfield, feeling that the preacher was not attaching enough
importance to the coming marriages, ventured to remark that her brother,
who was a United States Judge at Nashville, had ever been regarded as a
keen appraiser of a horse. But the fact that she was the sister of so
distinguished a man did not at all s