ation]

He finally unyoked his oxen, dropped the yoke right where he took it off
and turned his cattle into the yard. "Now then, we'll get a bite to eat,
and I'll show you two horses, and durn me if I won't give you your choice
and a good trade." "Martha-Ann," he called, "Martha-Ann!"

In a moment a little, bright, bustling old woman came to the door and
shading her eyes with her apron, called back: "What is it, Dan'l? Did you
bring the merlasses, and candles, and the broom?"

"Yes," he answered back.

"And the salt?"

"Yes."

"And the rennet for the cheese, and the salt-pork?"

"Yes, yes, yes," he answered, "and I've brought a young man, Phil. Ulmer's
son; goin to trade him 'Dick.'"

"What?" said she, coming out to where we were. "Now, Dan'l, you are not
going to do anything of the kind."

"Yes, I be," he said.

"You shan't, I won't have my horse sold; you know he is the only one I can
drive, and he is so kind and gentle, and the only good horse you have; you
shan't sell him." And then she sat down on the cart-tongue and cried as if
her heart would break, and I began to think I was going to really get a
splendid horse at a bargain.

All through the dinner she sobbed, and when she would pass me bread or
anything, it was with a heartbroken sigh, and I began to want that horse.

Finally dinner finished, he took me to the barn. There were two horses
together standing on the barn-floor eating corn-husk. They both looked as
if they never had eaten anything else. One was a bay, and the other a
grey; they were so poor that you could mistake either for a barrel with
half the staves fallen in.

"Thar, sir, be two fine critters; you can have either; this grey one is
Dick, the one the old woman is so sot on, but he's getting too frisky for
her ter handle, he's the best dispositioned animal yer ever saw; yer do
anything with him, he's always ready. Get him with 'tother on a load at
the bottom of a big hill and he's thar every time; yer see, he's a leetle
sprung in one knee thar, he done that by pulling; it don't hurt him a bit
ter drive, and go! Why, do you know he's trotted in two minutes? You
notice, one eye's bit off color! Blue? Wall sir, that was strained a
leetle by watching over his blinder to see that no other hoss should pass
or get near him when he were druve on the race track twelve years ago, but
it don't hurt him now."

"You praise this horse," I remarked, "but don't say a word about the
other."