This stirred his father's ire apparently. "Why, Benjamin! Why, what on the face of the earth do you mean? Ride into that swamp! Why, you must have lost what little sense you had when you was born! I remember, jest as well as if it was day before yesterday, when Uncle Jimmy Cosby's red steer got in that swamp, and we couldn't git him out. Git him out, did I say? We couldn't even git nigh him. We could hear him beller, but we never got where we could see ha'r nor hide of him. If I was thirty year younger I'd take my foot in my hand and wade in there and see where the smoke comes from."
IT WAS A SWAMP
Little Crotchet laughed. "If I had two good legs," said he, "I'd soon see what the trouble is."
This awoke Ben Gadsby's ambition. "I believe I'll go in there and see where the fire is."
"Fire!" exclaimed old Mr. Gadsby, with some irritation. "Who said anything about fire? What living and moving creetur could build a fire in that thicket? I'd like mighty well to lay my eyes on him."
"Well," said Ben Gadsby, "where you see smoke there's obliged to be fire. I've heard you say that yourself."
"Me?" exclaimed Mr. Jonathan Gadsby, with a show of alarm in the midst of his indignation. "Did I say that? Well, it was when I wasn't so much as thinking that my two eyes were my own. What about foxfire? Suppose that some quagmire or other in that there swamp has gone and got up a ruction on its own hook? Smoke without fire? Why, I've seed it many a time. And maybe that smoke comes from an eruption in the ground. What then? Who's going to know where the fire is?"