Where's _your_ gal, Marty?"

"Haven't got none," declared the boy with a scowl as positive as his double negative.

"What?" exploded Walky in apparent surprise. "Then I be needin'

spectacles, jest as my ol' woman says. I thought I seen you hangin'

around Hope Drugg's store more'n a little lately; and I vum I thought 'twas you 't sat beside little Lottie at the Ladies' Aid supper t'other night an' treated her to ice-cream till the child liketer bust--er--haw! haw! haw!"

"Aw, you don't need gla.s.ses, Walky. What _you_ need is blinders,"

growled Marty with some impatience.

"Ya-as; I've been tol' that before," said the incorrigible joker. "Folks don't take kindly to the idee of my havin' sech sharp eyes, neither. I undertook to tell _you_ a thing or two, Jase, some time ago 'bout that Tom Hotchkiss; but ye wouldn't see it with my eyes."

"If I seen everything and everybody in the town the way you seen it, Walky, I'd get as twisted as a dumbed sas'fras root," snarled Uncle Jason.

"Ye wouldn't ha' been so twisted about Tom," Walky said placidly. He was as thick-skinned as a walrus and the cut direct did not in the least trouble him.

"I tell ye, I 'member what that feller was when he was a boy," he pursued. "Bad blood, there--bad blood."

"By mighty!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Uncle Jason. "Cale Hotchkiss was as square a feller as ever walked on sole-leather. I'm glad he's dead. If he'd lived to see his son turn out so bad----"

"'Twarn't Caleb Hotchkiss' blood I was referrin' to," Walky struck in.

"Caleb merried one o' them Pickberry gals over to Bowling. An' you know well enough what them Pickberrys was. As for this here Tom, he was as sly as a skunk-bear when he was a boy."

"For goodness' sake!" interrupted Janice, hoping to divert the tide of Walky's talk. "What is a 'skunk-bear'?"

"Wolverine," explained her cousin quickly. "And the meanest creature that ever got on a line of traps. Hey, Walky?"

"Now you've said it, boy," agreed the expressman. "An' that remin's me of one of the meanest things that Tom Hotchkiss done when he was a boy."

"Oh, well!" grunted Uncle Jason, who evidently disliked the discussion of Tom's short-comings. "They say George Washington cut down his father's favorite cherry tree; yet he grew up to be president."

"Huh! but he didn't lie about it--_that's_ why he got to be president,"

said the astute Walkworthy. "And Tom Hotchkiss lied about this mean thing _he_ done."

"Wal! let's have it," Mr. Day said, with a sigh. "It'll choke ye I can plainly see if ye ain't allowed to unburden your soul."

Walky began to stuff his pipe out of Mr. Day's tobacco sack that he had appropriated from the shelf beside the door.

"Ye see," he said, "Tom worked for ol' man Ketcham a while--him that run the dairy farm over Middletown way. But Tom never did work long in one place when he was a boy. _That_ oughter told ye something, Jase."

Mr. Day grunted. Marty said:

"Go on with your story, Walky. Who told you you was the law and the prophets?"

"I was prophet enough about how Tom Hotchkiss was a-comin' aout,"

chuckled Walky. "Wal! howsomever, old Ketcham run quite a dairy for them days. He bought up all the neighbors' milk, too, and made b.u.t.ter and cheese. I expect 'twould ha' been called a crematory to-day."

"Ho, ho!" shouted Marty. "That's a hot one. Creamery, you mean, Walky."

"Oh, do I?" said the unruffled Mr. Dexter. "Wal, mebbe I do. Anyhow, he stood Tom and his tricks quite a spell--he was slow to wrath, was old Ketcham, bein' a Quaker by persuasion; but bimeby Tom got too much for him and he turned him away. Tom was a great practical joker--oh, yes!

But he was one o' them kind that gits mad when the joke's turned on themselves. So he was sore on the Ketchams."

"Huh! he ain't the only one geared that-a-way," put in Mr. Day.

"No; but he was about the only feller I ever knowed that 'ud ha' thunk up sech a mean way of gittin' square with old Ketcham."

"What did he do?" demanded Marty, becoming impatient at the expressman's leisurely tale, while Aunt 'Mira got up and began to stir about the kitchen, clearing the supper table. She often confessed to Janice that it gave her legs "the twidgets" to listen to one of Walky's long-drawn-out stories.

"Why--he, he!--'twas funny, tubbesure. The old man stored his b.u.t.ter in a stone spring-haouse. The spring was under the floor and cooled the place nicely. Both ends of the buildin' was jest slats 'bout an inch apart, so's to let the air through but keep most critters aout.

"Now, jest about the time old man Ketcham got through with Tom Hotchkiss, Tom, he discovered there was a ol' she-skunk with a young fambly in the neighborhood. 'Tain't no trick a-tall to l'arn when a polecat is located near by, ye know; all ye gotter do, as the fellers says, is ter foller yer nose--haw! haw! haw!

"Tom was mad clean through when Mr. Ketcham turned him away. Didn't take him long, I vum! ter link up them skunks with his idea of vengeance--nossir!" Walky said reflectively. "And he perceeded to put his idee into practice."

"What did he do, Walky?" asked Marty again. "Ye might give us a hint."

"Oh, I'm gittin' to it," said the expressman placidly. "He toled them skunks into the spring-haouse. That's what he done."

"How?" asked Marty, now interested, while the other listeners expressed their several opinions of the young rascal's trick.

"Lard. A lard trail. Skunks love lard er any grease. Tom laid the trail to the spring-haouse and then yanked off two of the lower slats. Plenty room for the biggest skunk livin' to git through. Then he chucked a lump of grease inside, after which he skun out."

"And what happened, Walky?" Janice asked.

"Why, when ol' Miz' Ketcham went aout to the spring-haouse in the morning, there was Miz' Skunk an' four skunk kittens camping in the middle of the floor. She seen 'em through the slats an' didn't darest open the door."

"Couldn't she frighten them out?" asked Nelson.

"Schoolmaster!" said Walky, chuckling, "I'm surprised at your ignerance.

Ye sartain sure don't know much about the nature of skunks."

"I admit my failing," Nelson said, smiling. "I've never been much interested in skunkology."

"Ye might be--an' with profit," said Walky, more briskly. "I understand their fur's wuth more'n most animals ye kin trap nowadays.

"Howsomever, the skunk is 'bout the boldest critter that runs wild. Let 'em alone and they'll let you alone. But they ain't afeard of nothin' on two laigs or four--or that flies in the air, neither. When ye see a skunk in the path, go 'round it."

"We do," chuckled Marty. "He's got right of way."

"An' don't never try to chase one or poke one--'nless ye have a mighty long pole," said Walky Dexter. "Miz' Ketcham, she knowed that. The skunk an' her four kittens was camped in that spring-haouse an' they seemed to like it. No way of coaxin' 'em aout and there was two hunder' pound o'

June b.u.t.ter in the place."

"Oh!" exclaimed Janice.

"Dear suz!" was Aunt 'Mira's comment. "Why didn't they shoot 'em?"

"Huh!" grunted Uncle Jason.

"The man ain't never drawed the breath o' life yet could shoot a skunk quick enough," Walky declared. "No, ma'am! And there was five in that bunch. Miz' Ketcham was jest as mad as she could be. She knowed that if anything riled 'em while they was quartered in that spring-haouse ev'ry pound of b.u.t.ter stored there would be sp'ilt.