"Yes, wife! And I'll j-j-just warn any of you young f-f-fellers that if I catch you trying to p-p-plow with my heifer, you'll be food for buzzards before sun-up!"
He swept his eyes savagely round the circle as he spoke, and the subject dropped.
The conversation turned into other channels, and flowed in a maudlin, sluggish manner far into the night. Every member of the bibulous party was as happy as he knew how to be. The landlord's till was full of money, the loafers were full of liquor, and the doctor's heart was full of vanity and trust in himself.
CHAPTER III.
THE EGYPTIANS
"Steal! to be sure they may; and egad, serve your best thoughts as gypsies do stolen children,—disfigure them to make them pass for their own."
—Sheridan.
In order to comprehend the relationship of this strangely mated pair, we must go back five or six years to a certain day when this same Doctor Aesculapius rode slowly down the main street of a small city in Western Pennsylvania, and then out along a rugged country highway. A couple of miles brought him to the camp of a band of gypsies.
A thin column of smoke ascending from a fire which seemed almost too lazy to burn, curled slowly into the air.