went into his shop, presently
returning with some implements in his hand. We could not make out what
they were. He handed them up to Marks, and the two seemed to discuss the
matter, for after a time Marks selected one and held it out to old
Christian. The smith took it, turned it over in his hand, nodded his
head and went back into his shop, while Marks gathered up his reins and
came after us in a slow fox trot.

We slipped over the ridge and then straightened in our saddles.

"Boys," said the hunchback, fingering the mane of the Bay Eagle, "that
was a bad job. We ought to be a little more careful in the pickin' of
enemies."

"Damn 'em," muttered Jud, "I wonder what mare's nest they're fixin'. I
ought to 'a twisted the old buck's neck."

The hunchback leaned over his saddle and ran his fingers along the neck
of the splendid mare. "Peace," he soliloquised, "is a purty thing." Then
he turned to me with a bantering, quizzical light in his eyes.

"Quiller," he said, "don't you wish you had your dollar back in your
pocket?"

"Why?" said I.

"It's like this," said he. "One time there was an' old miser, an' when
he was a-dyin' the devil come, an' set down by the bed, an' the devil
said, 'You've done a good deal of work for me, an' I reckon I ought to
give you a lift if you need it. Now, then, if there's any little thing
you want done, I'll look after it for you.' The miser said he'd like to
have an iron fence round his grave, if the devil thought he could see to
it without puttin' himself out any. The devil said it wouldn't be any
trouble, an' then he counted off on his fingers the minutes the miser
had to live, an' lit out.

"They buried the miser in a poor corner of the graveyard where there was
nothin' but sinkfield an' sand briars, an' that night the devil went
down to the blacksmith an' told him he wanted an iron fence put around
the old feller's grave, an' to git it done before midnight. The
blacksmith throwed his coat an' went to work like a whitehead, an' when
twelve o'clock come he had the iron fence done an' a settin' around the
miser's grave.

"Just as the clock struck, the devil come along, an' he said to the
blacksmith, standin' there a-sweatin' like a colt, 'Well, I see you got
her all up hunkey dorey.' 'Yes,' said the blacksmith, 'an' now I want my
pay.' 'Let's see about that,' said the devil; 'did you do that job
because you wanted to, or because you didn't want to?' The blacksmith
didn't know what