Ben took out his knife, and began to whittle.
Getting frightened, as he found himself gradually sinking, Joe roared for help, drawing the whole party to the spot. This was just what Ben wanted. He knew that Joe had told everybody in the neighborhood of the trick he put on him, and it was his turn now.
The moment Joe saw Uncle Isaac, he cried out, “Do help me; I’m going down.” As there was now real danger of his smothering in the mud, Ben ran the poles under his arms. Joe made desperate efforts to extricate himself by means of the poles, but the mire so sucked him down, that he only succeeded in getting out his shoulders.
At this juncture Tige came rushing along, and, seizing him by the collar, endeavored to lift him out; but sinking down into the slime, which Joe’s struggles had wrought into a complete porridge, his mouth and nose were filled with mud and water: giving a vigorous snort, he completely plastered Joe’s face and eyes with it, who, not being in the most amiable of moods, hit him a cuff on the side of the head. Tige, enraged at being thus rewarded for his good intentions, was going to bite him, when Ben pulled him away by the tail.
“Pity I wan’t a dog,” whined Joe; “then there’d be some feeling for me.”
He now appealed again to Uncle Isaac; but the old man had thought the matter all over, and come to the deliberate conclusion that it was time Joe’s wings were clipped; that, if not checked, he would become unbearable; that there could be no better time to administer reproof, and one stringent enough to be remembered.
“You know, Joseph,” said he, in a severe tone, “that the trick you played last week on Ben was not by any means the first you’ve played on him and others. Who was it put on a bear-skin, got down on all fours, followed the widow Hadlock when she was going home from my house through the woods, and growled, and frightened the poor woman so that she was sick for three months, and the whole town turned out the next day to kill the bear?”
“I cut all her winter’s wood, to pay for it.”
“Who,” said Joe Riggs, “stopped up the chimney, when the young folks had a New Year’s party in the chamber over the store, and put peas on the stairs, so that Seth Warren fell from top to bottom, and broke his leg?”
“Joe Griffin,” cried Seth.