BEST SHORT STORIES

Otago Witness, Issue 4033, 30 June 1931, Page 8

BEST SHORT STORIES

XIV.-AN HONEST DEAL.

WALTER D. EDMONDS.

(Copyright.—For the Otago Witness.)

By

“ There she is,” said I. Finis Wilson, With a wave of his hand toward the mare. “ Gentle, kind, the ideal horse.” He ran his hand all over her, slapping her. “ One hundred and thirty dollars, cash. I paid a hundred and ten for her.” The active little farmer looked her over for the seventh time, walked twice round her nervously, and asked, almost hopefully, “ She ain’t scared of the cars, you say?” “No,” said Mr Wilson. “As far as the cars is concerned she’d go to sleep with her tail on the rail. Wouldn’t she, George ? ” George was Finis Wilson’s 40-year-old stable boy. He lifted a pair of soupy eyes from where he sat on a bucket and said, “ Guess that’s right.” “ Sure,” said Finis Wilson, “ it’s right.” “ I’m glad to hear it,” said the farmer, looking more worried as he fingered some bills in his pocket. “ I’m aiming to use her hauling milk.” A wide grin overspread Mr Wilson’s thin features. He pulled the ends of liis pale moustache together over his chin, then poked the farmer confidentially between the ribs. “ For a milk horse,” he remarked, “ that mare can do about everything but milk the cows.” The farmer thought a moment. “ Make it a hundred,” he suggested with the air of a man with bold decisions in his head. “ Sold! ” Mr Wilson stretched out a long arm. The farmer counted the money into his palm, wetting his thumb and forefinger ‘to feel each bill. “ I’ll hitch her on to the back of your wagon,” said Mr Wilson. The farmer climbed aboard and started his heavy team, and the thin mare shuffled off lazily behind. Leaning against the barn, Mr Wilson watched them disappear. “ George,” he observed in his mild voice, “ there was a sale.”

“ I guess that’s right,” said George. “ You was a witness,” said Mr Wilson. “ I was strictly honest in all I told him.” “ How about what she done at the depot?” asked the stable-boy. He made a thrust with the dungfork with which he had emerged from the barn. Following the gesture, Finis Wilson saw a pair of wheels and splintered shafts piled up on a battered wagon box that lacked a spring and the rear axle. “ George, you’d ought to pay more attention,” —he shook his .head sombrely —“ or you won’t never get to be a horse dealer. It was the engine give her that idee.” George set down the dungfork in order to scratch his head. “ I guess that’s right, Mr Wilson.” “ It’s a sensitive point, George; but if he gives her time she may outgrow even that notion about the engine.” “Yeah.” “It was an honest deal,” said Mr Wilson. “I always make an honest deal, George, and if you paid more attention you’d see how I do it, and you’d maybe be a successful horse trader yourself when you get to be a man. I’ve always been honest in trading. Of course, a man can make a little here and a little there by lying and cheating, but that’s only small money. He’s got to be honest to make a big profit. I’m honest, George. I’ve never been cheated in a trade to my knowledge. And no man has ever got the law onto me, either.” He slowly pulled the back of his hand across his lips, and a look of sadness crept into his eyes. “ Oncet in a while,” he went on, “ it’s natural that a man don’t understand me. The man that bought that black mare just now may be one of them. But that’s what an honest man has got to expect. I’ve found that out, and I’ll tell you why it is, George. It’s ’'ecause the horse himself is the sensitive point in a deal.” “ Yeah,” said George, “ I guess that’s right.” He stood awhile staring after the thin stooped shoulders disappearing up the alley. Then he picked up the dungfork and flung its contents on the barnyard heap. “ I don’t know a, great lot,” he observed to himself in a puzzled way, “ but I’m real glad that’s the last of her.”

11. If horse traders have a reputation for being indolent men it is probably because they are constantly overworking their imaginations. I. Finis Wilson was most 'familiar to his neighbours in the townof Ava, New York, when they saw him sitting on the porch of Mrs Edna Brown’s hotel, his cowhide boots on the rail and his head lolling against the back of the rocking chair. The hotel stood on the main street, which was an enlargement of the high way to Rome, and the porch offered him a perfect observation post from which to watch for strange horses entering the county. It was Finis Wilson’s serious statement and pride that no horse had lived and died in upper Oneida County without having passed at least once Hi rough his barn on the wings of profit.

On the hotel porch Finis nodded to one or two of the boarders and sat down to spend an hour till supper in pleasant meditation on the departure of the black mare. The stout man on his right spat leisurely into the ear of an open nasturtium and remarked, “ I seen Whiter driving out with that black mare.” “ Yeanh.” “ Yeanh.”

The man saw no chance of securing figures, so he settled himself to a comfortable enjoyment of the shade and the slight breeze. The hum of bees in the nasturtium vines was lulling. He folded his hands over his paunch and gently rocked himself. Then, without warning, an idea occurred to him. “Jeepers!” he exclaimed. “ Yeanh?”

“ Did you see the mare the doctor drove in with this morning?” Finis glanced sideways over his thin nose. “ No.” he said. “ There’s a horse! ” “ Yeanh?” “ Oh, gol! She’s pretty.” Finis grunted. “ She’s a dandy animal. He got her from a feller in Frankfort.” “ Yeanh ? ” .

She’s got quite a record for speed down there. She looks it. Bright bay. Bet she’s a Morgan.” “Yeanh? There’s quite a few breeds you see that colour in.”

The stout man was annoyed and blew out his cheeks, remarking, “ Well, Finis, you’ll have to look her over probably; but I hear she ain’t for sale.” “ Yeanh.” “ It’s too bad you didn’t get the first profit onto her yourself,” said the stout man. Finis did not answer this. He removed his feet from the rail and ambled inside after his supper. The stout man still looked annoyed. He turned to the travelling polish salesman. “ I’d hate to be the doctor,” he said. “ Once Finis sees that mare that doctor won’t have no peace. It’s too bad, at that. He’s a nice boy; but he’s just out of Harvard College, and doctors ain’t got much sense in a money deal, anyhow.” The vendor of polishes puffed out his chest. “ I’m a pretty good hand at judging a man,” he said, “ and I shouldn’t think your doctor would have much to worry about getting cheated by that thin hayseed, if he’s the one you’re talkinsr about.” The fat lids of the other’s eyes seemed slowly to congeal as he gave the toes of his boots a noncommittal scrutiny*. “Well, maybe you’re right, at that. Finis didn’t go to no college; but he’s never been cheated in a deal, and he says he’s never done no cheating into a deal, to the best of his knowledge. But then he’s an ignorant man. Finis is kind of slow.”

“ Sure/’ said the salesman, affably. “Just what I said.” “ Course Finis ain’t got much polish,” the fat man went on as if to himself, “but he always was kind of cute. He started out when he was thirteen. He took and sold Riddle’s grey mare out of Riddle’s back pasture lot to a bunch of gipsies for eighty dollars. Then he

went around to Riddle with the money and brought that mare for twenty-five dollars. Riddle never went into the back lot to see if she was there. Finis knowed so much about her, he was glad to get that much. Nobody wouldn’t have knowed a thing about it if them gipsies hadn’t come back the next week hollering that they’d been cheated into buying a. mare with the cold spavin for eighty- dollars. That’s how Finis has always done. He’s kind of slow, so he aims to keep ahead of the other feller. But even then it was a fair deal, except for the gipsies, and we run them out of town.” The salesman shifted the conversation. “Funny name he’s got. What did you say it was ? ”

The stout man unfolded his hands from his belly.

“I. Finis Wilson,” he said dryly. “I. for Ira. His pa named him that after himself. He was his fourteenth child. His ma give him the other name.” HI.

When Finis Wilson emerged from supper to. take his seat again on the porch in the- cool of the evening he was meditating on the-, stout man’s descrip-

tion of the doctor’s new mare. Before he could actually sit down, a thud of' hoofs and a rattle of spokes sounded down the street, and the doctor flashed past in his surrey, driving his regular horse one that Finis had sold him when he first came to Ava in the spring. It had been a good sale, Finis remembered, but he had not made as large a profit as he might have, for he knew that most doctors needed two horses and he intended to preserve his patronage for the second also. Besides, the doctor had seemed too much of a nice boy, and was so frankly unaccustomed to horses that I 1 inis had not found it in his heart to disillusion him in the first deal. “We’ll coax him a bit,” he had said to George, “ and gentle him some.” Finis watched the doctor, out of sight. It occurred to him that his absence would afford a first-rate opportunity to examine the mare freely and see how well founded the stout man’s enthusiasm had been.

He made hi 3 way slowly down the street. Twilight had come in about the trunks of the over-arching elms with a touch of dew and a scent of meadowvisible between the houses; Finis, strolling along with his hands in hi s pocket-, nodded every now and then to villagers taking their ease on their front porches. At the corner of the doctor’s cottage he paused to cut himself a chew. Having stowed it outside of his right molars, he wiped hi s lips with the back of his thumb, jerked the ends of his moustache, and disappeared behind the house.

front of the stable door he found William Dewey, the doctor’s man, polish mg a new light single harness, whistling the while monotonously on three notes. Finis thought he was rubbing with unwonted enthusiasm. H e leaned himself against the door frame and crossed one leg before the other.

‘‘ Ain’t seen you show so much grit at a job in a long while, Bill,” he observed. “ Got to have a smart harness for a smart mare, Finis.”

Bill breathed on the check buckle and rubbed it tenderly with his handkerchief. “ Genuine sterling plate on them buckles,- Finis. Doc bought it particular for his new mare.” “ Yeanh, I heard he’d picked up a new horse somewheres. What’s she like? ” “Like? Say, there ain’t a horse in seven counties can touch her. She’s won in Whitesboro every year for five. She’s a genuine purebred Morgan. You could trade all the brutes you got in your barn, Finis, all for one horse, and I bet even you couldn’t get a value equal to her.” x “I been hearing she’s fair to middling,” Finis said. “You don’t believe it, by cripus, but I’ll fetch her out.” “Don’t take the bother,” said Finis politely, but his long nose twitched and a tingling came under the skin between his shoulders. “No bother,” said Bill from within the barn, with the note of a man who is willing to convince a friend of his stupidity. Finis heard the light, quick steps of a horse affably backing out of a stall and approaching the door, but he managed to preserve his casual pose. Then a bright head came forth and the short ears pricked at him, and he saw her take a breath of his scent. In spite of himself, one hand came out of his pocket to stroke the delicate nostrils. It seemed to Finis that he had never come to a quicker understanding with a mare, and he began to realise that the doctor wasn’t her natural owner. But Bill pushed himself importantly between them; and, taking the lead rope close to the halter, brought her t out

into the open. She was all Morgan, widechested, a hint of Arab about her head, high-crested, straight-legged, fullquartered. Finis felt cold little ripples of excitement doing circus acts with his heart. One look and she filled his eyes. It gave him genuine pain to know that she wasn’t his. As Bill trotted her round in significant silence, Finis’s hand came up and his lips ran over her good points as if to a buyer; his hand reached behind him for his showing whip. To sell such a horse would be a fitting climax to his long career. He saw himself at the Syracuse Fair turning down eight-hundred-dollar bids he saw himself in a frock coat and yellow boots and a new grey hat; he heard comment about her on all sides, and his own voice saying, “ Northern bred, mister. On my farm. Four years old and a daisy. Ask anybody that comes from Ava.’ And all the time, too, he realised that she belonged to a college-bred doctor, no more than a boy, who had pink cheeks and next to no knowledge of the . world and horses. If he had been a philosopher, he would have doubted God’s existence; being Finis Wilson, he knew;that it wasn’t right and that he would have to do something about it. So he said in his mild voice, “ She’s a pretty clever buggy proposition at that, Bill.” Bill came to a dead stop. “ Buggy proposition 1 I thought you knowed a horse!” “Yeanh. Don’t take it hard, Bill. She’s past twelve. Let me look at her mouth. Get a lantern!” , Bill sent a shuddering spit directly for the toes of Finis’s boots, and led the mare into the barn without a word. t “You oughtn’t to take it so hard, Bill.” ‘ “Twelve!” Bill’s voice came cavernously from the barn. “ She’s rising five. Doc’s uncle raised her on his own place.” “ Well, a man’s relative is apt to make that kind of mistake in a gift.” Bill came out of the barn with a lantern and resumed his work on the har-

ness. He kept a scornful silence, and after a few remarks Finis moseyed away to the main street. He stopped to look in at the string of horses in his barn and said, “Trash!” bitterly. His stable boy lifted his head out of the corner manger and looked at him sleepily. “ I guess that’s right, Mr Wilson.” “You shut up!” said Finis, with unexpected savageness. IV. If ever Finis Wilson desired anything in his life, it was the doctor’s mare. He dreamed about her that night, and the first thing he saw in the morning after breakfast was th e doctor driving her out of town on a distant call. The rate at which she took him past brought a grunt of admiration.up out of the stout man. “Didn’t I tell you?” he demanded triumphantly of Finis. Finis declined to answer. “ Something’s soured into him,” the stout man soliloquised aloud. “ He’d ought to see the doctor.” He sat down and said to himself that it was too bad the doctor wasn’t a sharper man. But Finis went on to his barn, where he put George through three hours of misery at cleaning up the stable. For his own occupation he sat on the grain bin in search of ideas. Little by little these settled in his stomach, and before dinner time Finis had acquired quite a pain. So he went round to the doctor’s cottage. There was a string beside the door which he pulled, and a bell rang loudly just over his head. At the same moment the doctor himself onened the door. “ I saw you through the window,” he explained. “ Come in.” He led Finis into his consulting room. He was a young man with fresh-coloured skin and inexperienced eyes. Finis peered;up at him shredly from under his hat brim. “ Sit down,” said the doctor. “I don’t know that it’s serious, Doc. It’s just that my dinner ain’t been setting so good lately.” “ Let’s see your tongue,” said the doctor. He had learned that his patients expected all the rituals of his office, and as a matter of fact they were as pleased to see the diploma framed on the wall as he was himself. As long as he would have to pay. Finis extracted the last atom of service, pulse taking, thermometer, and all, and carefully pocketed the doctor’s pills. Then, as a natural thing, he brought the conversation round to the mare. “ She’s a likely-looking buggy horse,” he said grudgingly. “ I’m wondering if you and me couldn’t make a deal onto her.” “ Why, I don’t know, Finis. I hadn’t thought of selling her. You see, she was a gift. My uncle gave her to me for a wedding present.” Finis was properly startled. “ Yes,” said the doctor. “ I’m going out to Indiana next month to get married. I’d have gone out this spring, only I didn’t have the money to. I’ve got enough now, though not much for a honeymoon.” He smiled, and blushed. “ Well, by gol, that’s fine,” said Finis. Then a sly look came into his eyes. “ I’d give you 200dol for that mare. That would give you quite a trip, now.” “ Well, you know what she’s worth, I guess. But I couldn’t sell her. I wouldn’t want to.” “ I’ll make it two-fifty, between friends, and I’ll find you another horse, cheap,” Finis offered. The doctor appeared lost in thought. If he had felt Finis’s pulse at that moment he would have been professionally alarmed. But the thin dealer’s only sign of excitement w’as the tw’isting of the ends of his long pale moustache together over his chin. The' doctor looked up. “ No, Finis; she’s not for sale. She’s too near the perfect horse for my work, though I guess she wouldn’t go far outside of it.” “ That’s right, but she’s kind of a clever article, you know.” “Just the same, I couldn’t. Take two of those pills after every meal. They’re a kind of physic. And they’ll touch up your liver. Come around again in a day or two.” Finis sighed, paid, and went out. He made his way to his barn, where he found George feeding the horses their noon grain. “ George,” he asked, “ have you looked at that mare the doctor’s got ? ” “ Yeanh.” “What do you think of her?” “Wejl, she’s kind of pretty,” said George, trying to imitate his employer's accustomed manner. “Kind of pretty! You poor, abandoned twirp! That mare’s the finest piece of horse meat I’ve seen in this county in twenty years.” “ Yeanh,” George said meekly. “ 1 guess that’s right.” “ Here,” said Finis, suddenly taking the pill-box from his pocket. “ Eat them. I just bought them off Doc, and there ain’t no point in throwing them away. They’re good for the liver.” “ Thanks,” said George. Finis sat down on a box and filled an old corncob. “George, I’d give a lot to buy that mare, but th e danged fool won’t sell. I offered him a good price, at that. What can a man do to buy a horse from a man that don’t want to sell ? ” “ Give him some more money,” said George. “You shut up!” said Finis.

It was the source of infinite sorrow to Finis Wilson that George appeared to have offered the only possible way to deal with the doctor. But in the succeeding weeks he raised his price to 400dol, with no effect. Two days later he had called at the doctor’s office and narrated George’s symptoms as his own. Since George had eaten all the pills at once, the symptoms were sufficiently peculiar to warrant Finis’s appearance for several times more. “ I feel like a horse taking a heavy load downhill on a high breeching. I can’t get no comfort no more.” It occurred to him that the symptoms also described his own state of mind. But the doctor, while he retained his interest in Finis’s digestion, would have none of the deal. “If he wasn’t such a danged fool,” Finis complained, “ he’d see I was offering him more than the mare is worth.” Finally Finis lost all sense of balance. He stopped the doctor in the middle of the main street as he was returning from a Sunday afternoon call, driving his old horse, and he said, “ Doc, I honestly make you my last offer .for that mare. I’ll pay you 500dol down for her—just as she is. Spot cash for the mare alone. You’re leaving to go West for your wife, ain’t -you ? ’’ The doctor drew a long breath. Five hundred dollars would not only furnish a honeymoon; there would be enough remaining to furnish the upstairs bedroom he had been writing Ermintrude about, w’hich by correspondence they had planned in complete detail. But he preserved his presence of mind.

“ What’s the matter 1 ” “ I come in after dinner and there she lay as big as a elephant,” groaned Bill. “ She’d got loose some way. She’d got her head in the grain bin and filled herself bowdacious full, and there she was kicking like a steam engine and roaring like Niagara Falls. I got a pill into her, but it was too late. I done the best I could, Doc, honest. But it weren’t no good at all.” The doctor looked in without a word and saw his mare on her back, all f ouf legs in the air. It was all he needed to see. Though he was not much of a horseman, he began to appreciate the genuineness of Bill’s sorrow when the latter said, “ I been mighty close to prayer, Doc.” The doctor was dazed again, as if the 500dol had bludgeoned him between the eyes. If he had only closed with Finis, he saw that the sorrow might still have been theirs, but the grief would have been the dealer’s. Then a light came to him, or it may have been the resurgence of the good New. England blood that pioneered this great land of ours. He clapped Bill on the shoulder. “ Listen here, Bill. Borrow Mr Smith’s stone boat and his big team, and right after dark you take her round to Finis Wilson’s. I’m leaving in threequarters of an hour for Indiana. I’m going to strike a deal with him.” All the world loves a horse, but there is no one in the world at all who doesn’t like even better to see a horse dealer trimmed and shaved. Bill looked as if he had been shown the way to hope. “ All right, Doc.”

Finis watched his fluttering coattails, and he grinned and grinned. Then he took his own way to his stable. He went leisurely, drawing out his expectation to the last drop. If the doctor had been a keen man, he said to himself, he would have waited for another lOOdol. And Finis knew that the lOOdol would have been forthcoming. “ Well, George,” he said to his henchman, “how be you?” George got feebly up from his bed in the manger and rubbed his eyes. “ Not very good, Mr Wilson. Some way I ain’t been right since my inwards got a hold on them pills.” “ Cheer up and feel better,” said Finis with surprising boisterousness. “ Tonight I bought the doctor’s mare. Here’s a dollar for you to feel better on.” “ Thanks,” said George. “ Shall I go fetch her ? ” x “ She’s to be delivered. Fix some straw in that box stall.” George got up and spread some bedding. It was hard for Finis to sit still, and in spite of himself he was unable to keep his eyes from the door. After a while George sat beside him. They said nothing, but the light' of the lantern at their feet showed both their heads turned left and both jaws motionless to listen, and up above in the. brown dark- of the mow their great shadows also listened. Only Finis’s hand was twisting together the ends of his long, pale moustache. “ There’s a stone boat coming down the alley,” said George. “ What ’ Finis awoke like a shot to impending disaster. It was revealed to him in the

“ Yes, I’m leaving on the evening train, i I’ll be walking down to the depot, Finis, and I’ll let you know once for all then.” “ I’ll be on the hotel porch, Doc. I’ll 1 have the njoney in my pants pocket.” A great calm had settled over Finis’s mind. He ha'd tendered his limit —there was no more for him to do. As for the doctor, he drove slowly home. VI. Now the doctor was very young, and perhaps he may be excused when it is remembered that a country practice, while more highly considered in the old days than it is now, did not bring in a great deal of money for the luxuries of life. Further, it must be remembered that the doctor was dealing with the slyest man in seven counties, according to repute. And third, and perhaps most important, was a point that even Finis had overlooked. Though he was practicing in a village in up-State New York, and though he was planning to marry an Indiana girl, the doctor’s blood was of the Yankiest New England strains. He came from Sandwich; and his name was Nickerson. This as a preliminary to destiny. . . As he turned into his yard, he looked at his watch and saw that he had an hour till train time. As he got down over the wheel, he made up his mind that he would not sell the marc—even for 500dol. He was so relieved to have reached this decision that his faculties cleared from their dazzlement, and he became aware of his man, Bill, tears streaming from his eyes and strange noises issuing from his mouth. “ Cholera,” was the doctor’s first thought. “ Liquor,” his second. The third was a flash of fate. “The mare." “ Bill!” Bill stared at him dimly. “ She’s just fetched her last kick,” he said.

VII. With one eye on the clock and the other on the window, the doctor packed his carpet bags with wedding clothes. It was getting late, and a shower that had been promising for some time was obscuring the sunset. By the time he reached the station it would be really dark. He took up his bags and walked swiftly along the main street. Lights from the hotel windows showed Finis sitting on the steps. He got up. “ Doe? ” he said. There was a hint of quaver in liis voice. The doctor spoke like a man who has reached a decision against his better judgment. “ I’ve decided to let you have her, Finis. She’s yours for five hundred.” Finis handed a wad of bills to the doctor, who counted them carefully in the dim light. . “ I’m. an honest man,” said Finis in a pained manner. “ It’s best to be business like,” said the .young doctor; “it saves misunderstandings. I’ve told Bill to take the mare around to your barn in half an hour.” ' “ Good,” said Finis. “ I’d thought to fetch her myself, but I guess it’ll be better waiting for her. More exciting, so to speak.” He held out his hand, and, though his back was to the light, the doctor felt a twinge to see so plainly joy unalloyed on his thin face. “Shake, Doc,” said Finis. “And I’d take it kindly you and Bill wouldn’t say nothing about this deal for a while.” “ I won’t,” the doctor promised. “ I’ll be gone for a week.”

The train whistled for the above-town crossing, and the doctor sprinted for the station.

form of Bill, a heavy team, and the four stiff legs of the mare pointed to the single star showing dimly through the clouds. Finis came to his feet, walked slowly out with the lantern in his hand, and stared down for a long time. A great and mastering rage was gathering in his breast, but words offered no outlet to it until Bill said with heavy seriousness, “ I told Doc he hadn’t ought to sell, but he notioned your price was close to being a fair one.” Then Finis swore. He swore in a low-pitched monotony of sound, from which he emerged only once to demand from George the return of the dollar bill he had given him to celebrate the deal. But George also was 'on the point of going mad. He stood in a corner with a dungfork, saying, “ That doctor twerp got enough out of me already. He won’t get nothing more.” “ Cripus,” said Finis suddenly. “He weren’t only a boy by his looks.” “I thought you’d understand,” BilJ chuckled, preparing to return the boat and team. >' “ Bill,” said Finis, “ don’t say nothing about this.” Bill laughed unpleasantly. “ Five dollars,” said Finis. “ A dollar a day,” said Bill. Finis sat down, and suddenly he was a man again. He was thinking. “In all my life,” he said sombrely, “1 wasn’t never done on a deal. And I’ll be danged if I’ll let this boy-doctor do me. I wouldn’t have, only I was toe honest to suspicioii him, Bill. I was honest, and here’s what comes of it.” The lantern at his feet showed water dimming his sharp blue eyes. “ It’s tough,” Bill said.

“ I’ve got to make a profit on this mare,” said Finis in a low voice. “If I don’t I’ll have to go to New York, where folks is soften But I’ve got to inak e an honest profit. You see that, boys. If I don’t, that pink young hellion is going to have the snort on me.”

“Well,” said Bill, “I’ll leave you think it out yourself.” He went away. For half an hour Finis clasped his head-in thought. ’Then he said, as if feeling his way toward something, “ Westernville.” In the darkness of the barn George felt his jaw come open. . “ Westernville,” said Finis. “ Western ville. . . . They’re a great bunch to play cards. . . . They’ve got sporting notions. . . . Quite a e lot of boaters over there. They always take a chance, the big bezabors. . . . Westernville.” He looked over his shoulder. There was sweat on his cheeks, and George saw that the ends of his moustache were knotted squarely. “ I’ll do an honest deal,” said Finis loudly, “ and make an honest profit, by jeepers cripus! George, you come from Westernville. Don’t they r play cards in the store real late on Sunday nights?” “ I guess that’s right,” said George. “ Hitch up that white trotter to the hnggy. I bought him for a stepper. By gander, I’ll get a chance to feel out his pulse now.”

It took them a moment to get the snorting beast into the shafts. Finis climbed up with his whip while George held the horse’s head. Before George could get off the ground, the hind wheels had skidded into the main street.

VIII. It was the bride who finally, after three weeks’ honeymoon, suggested that they return to Ava. “ You can’t afford to lose your practice, Jonathan N.,” she said. With obvious reluctance the doctor agreed. Perhaps he had a New England conscience, and, now that the deal was over, perhaps it troubled him. “ We’ll get in by the evening trajji,” he said, “so our neighbours won’t know we’re back till the next morning. We’ll fool them that way.” She looked at him adoringly. “ I think that’s nice,” she said. So they packed up that night, after they had spent an evening together by the great cataract —an ideal spot for lovers, precluding speech. And they got on the train next morning on the long trip home. All day it seemed to Ermintrude that her husband was unduly absorbed in his own thoughts, but she supposed that he must be regulating them for the return to an arduous life, and she tried to be helpful by assuming a cheerful silence. So they came back, and the doctor suggested that they get off on the wrong side of the train. She was the first to get down, and it did her good to see that they had been watching for her husband, for there was a man waiting there. He clapped her husband on the shoulder. “ Hello, Doc,” he said. She saw that he was a lean man, with I° n g, yellow moustache, and that her husband was embarrassed. She wondered if it was because the lean man smelled so uncommonly of horses. But then she heard the doctor say, “ Finis, I’ve been thinking over that deal we made, and I’ve been thinking maybe I took too

much. Suppose I give you back a hundred?”

She was worried and puzzled by her husband’s troubled voice, and she turned appealing eyes on the thin man. He was grinning in a very friendly way at her and twisting together the ends on his pale moustache over his chin.

“ Don’t you bother, Doc,” he replied in his mild voice. “I made a profit of a hundred dollars on that mare.” The bride heard her husband draw a long breatlx “ Yeanh,” said the horsy man, “ I made a profit of a bunder dollars on that mare; and I done it honest, too. I never cheated a man in a deal.” The doctor seemed to wince—then he •stuttered a question inaudible to his wife, and the horsy man laughed as if to himself.

“ When that mare was delivered,” he said, “ I was surprised. But I said to myself, ‘Of course the doc don’t know about it—it’s that bezabor Bill. It would be hard,’ I said, ‘ if the doc was a loser just on account of accident. But,’ I says, ‘ if I can make an honest profit and deal, I won’t say nothing.’ So I recollected that there was always late Sunday night card games over to Westernville, and that they was a sporting proposition over there. ' And I knowed for a fact that some of them would want that mare; so I hitched up my white trotter and went scooting over. It was muddy roads, but -we got there inside an hour and a half—which is some night driving, Doc; that horse is sure a dinger for night driving, Doc, and I could let him go cheap for a cash turnover.”

The horsy man cocked his head, but as the doctor said nothing he went on. And as he went on his voice gained a little in excitement, and it seemed to the doctor’s bride that she could see him all muddy bursting through the door and stopping the pinochle games, his blue eyes shining. “ I went into the store,” said Finis, “ and I says, ‘ Boys, drinks.’ And there wasn’t one of them bezabors didn’t step up. ‘ Boys,’ says I, ‘ I’m an honest man, and I’ve come over to make an honest proposition to you. I’ve gone and bought the doctor’s mare,’ I says, ‘ and I’ve paid out 500dol for her. That’s a big price to get a profit on, and I wouldn’t ask one of you to give it me. But I says to myself, ‘ Them Westernville boys is sporting,’ and I figgered this • way. I’ll sell seven lOOdol tickets; we’ll put ’em in a hat when the cash has been delivered, and let any one you say drawn’ Believe me or not, them bezabors made up that 700dol in about seven minutes. The keep drawred, and Jerry Bumstead was the lucky man. Them Irish canawlers is all lucky as the devil. -He wanted to come back with me to collect the mare, so I took him. But when he seen the mare lying belly-up in the yard he certainly did cuss. I says, ‘Jerry, I’-in an honest man. I’ve never been cheated and I won’t cheat you. This is an honest deal, so here’s your hundred dollars back.’ ” Finis was still grinning. All at once the doctor grinned back. “ Finis,” he said, “ I want you to meet Mrs Nickerson.” Finis made a bow. “ Mam,” he said, stowing his cud of tobacco well back and holding her hand in both of .his, “ you’ve married the smartest man in seven counties, barring only I, Finis Wilson. Can I carrv your bag?”