ut just in time to save his coat tail
from being caught in the door, and when the grocery man came back from
breakfast he found a sign in front:--

THIS STORE IS CLOSED
TILL FURTHER NOTICE.

SHERIFF.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE DEPARTED ROOSTER--THE GROCERY MAN DISCOURSES ON DEATH--
THE DEAD ROOSTER--A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH--THE TENDERNESS
BETWEEN THE ROOSTER AND HIS FAITHFUL HEN--THE HEN RETIRES TO
SET--THE CHICKENS!--THE PROUD ROOSTER DIES--THE FICKLE HEN
FLIRTING IN INDECENT HASTE.

"Why don't you take an ice pick and clean the dirt out from under your
finger nails?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the
store and stroked the cat the wrong way as she lay in the sun on the
counter, on a quire of manilla paper.

"Can't remove the dirt for thirty days--it is an emblem of mourning. Had
a funeral at our house, yesterday;" and the boy took a pickle out of a
tub and put it in the cat's mouth, and shut her teeth together on it,
and then went to the show case, while the grocery man whose back had
been turned during the pickle exercise, thought by the way the cat
jumped into the dried apple barrel, and began to paw and scratch with
all four of her feet, and yowl, that she was going to have a fit.

"I hadn't heard about it," said the grocery man, as he took the cat by
the neck and tossed her out in the back shed into an old oyster box full
of sawdust, with a parting injunction that if she was going to have fits
she better go out where there was plenty of fresh air. "Death is always
a sad thing to contemplate. One day we are full of health, and joy, and
cold victuals, and the next we are screwed down in a box, a few words
are said over our remains, a few tears are shed, and there is a race to
see who shall get back from the cemetery first; and though we may think
we are an important factor in the world's progress, and sometimes feel
as though it would be unable to put up margins and have to stop the
deal, the world goes right along, and it must annoy people who die to
realize that they don't count for game. The greatest man in the world is
only a nine spot when he is dead, because somebody else takes the tricks
the dead man ought to have taken. But, say, who is dead at your house?"

"Our rooster! Take care, don't you hit me with that canvassed ham!" said
the boy as the grocery man