'And the money shall be paid to you when you deliver them.'

'You shall have every potato and bean I have for sale. I supposed I should be obliged to let Grizzle have them, but he may whistle for them, for all me; he allowed me last year but ten cents for potatoes, and fifty cents for beans. He will be angry, probably, but if I can have the money to pay, I shall not fear him any more than you seemed to the other day'—looking at Sam.

'No, I don't fear him; and all I wish is that father didn't owe him any thing.'

'Well, he is a very bad man, and will injure us all, if he can in any way, when he finds he is to be disappointed in getting things at his own price. He and Cross work into each other's hands, and they will not, if they can help it, have any one interfere with them; but I don't well see how they can.'

William Andrews was not mistaken in his views of the effect these things would have upon the minds of such men. But it will be time enough to meet trouble when it comes; at present we must hasten with our boys on their way to Billy Bloodgood's, much elated with their success, and with the change which seemed to have taken place in the views and feelings of young Andrews.

Mr. William Bloodgood—or Billy, as he was generally called—was the best to do of any of the folks for miles round, that is, he had more land, and a few more head of cattle, and managed a little better than his neighbors. But his house was rather a small concern, and his fences were in all sorts of shape, and his barn had far too many rents in it, and things lay in all directions around. Still, he did better than his neighbors, for Billy did not drink, and he kept himself busy, flying round on his farm, and made out almost always to raise quite a respectable quantity of one thing and another. He was a very good-natured man, and was blessed, as many good-natured men are, with a wife that could take his part, and her own too, sometimes. He had a peculiar way with him of going from one piece of work to another, without finishing either. Before his field of corn was half hoed, he would begin the potato patch, and leaving that unfinished, would be among the beans; and so on. This habit he carried with him into smaller matters, to his disadvantage, certainly, and very much to his discomfort; for his good woman was sorely annoyed by it, and whatever troubled her, he was sure to be obliged to bear a part of it. They lived happily however; for although Billy did not practise sound philosophy in his work, he did in that very delicate matter of conjugal relationship. He knew it would never answer for both to have their own way, one or the other must rule sometimes; and as he saw very soon that it would be a very difficult matter, if not an impossibility to get his better half to yield, unless she had a mind to it, he very properly decided to give up the reins to her. He was a wiser man than many took him to be.

As the boys entered the gate, Billy was coming out of the house, having just finished his dinner; he had a knife in one hand, and a piece of pigtail in the other, from which cutting a fair allowance, he put it into his mouth with a manifest relish. Without apparently noticing the boys who were walking towards him, he made directly to a great pile of brush which lay in the yard, and commenced chopping. They walked up to him, and endeavored to catch his eye, but he took no notice of them. After cutting a few sticks, he threw down the axe, and, looking at Jim, asked in a very loud voice,

'Did you speak to me?'

Jim shook his head in the negative, and then began to say something about his errand; he spoke, as he thought, in a pretty loud voice. But Billy only noticed his negative reply to the question he had put, and started for another corner of the yard, where lay a heap of farming utensils, and began dragging forth an old one-horse plough. After separating it from the rest, he commenced tinkering the rigging; Jim, in the meantime, trying to catch his eye, long enough to let him know that, although he had not yet spoken to him, he wished to do so. Twice, as he raised himself, Jim made a desperate effort, and called out as loud as he thought necessary,

'Mr. Bloodgood!'