“Then stand by while I unload him. Here he comes now. H'ist him down easy as you can.”
That was not too easy, for the end of the box slid from the tail-board to the ground with a thump that shook the breath from the prisoner within. But the breath came back again and furnished motive power for more and worse howls and whines. Joshua pricked up his ears and trotted to the further end of his halter.
“There!” said Henry G.'s boy, jumping to the ground beside the box, “that's off my hands, thank the mercy! Here's your fly paper. Five dozen sheets. You must have pretty nigh as many flies down here as you have moskeeters. Well, so long. I got to be goin'.”
“Wait a minute,” pleaded Brown. “What shall I do with this—er—blessed dog? Is he savage? Why did you bring him in a crate—like a piano?”
“'Cause 'twas the easiest way. You couldn't tie him up, not in a cart no bigger'n this. Might's well tie up an elephant. Besides, he won't stay tied up nowheres. Busted more clotheslines than I've got fingers and toes, that pup has. He needs a chain cable to keep him to his moorin's. Don't ye, Job, you old earthquake? Hey?”
He pounded on the box, and the earthquake obliged with a renewed series of shocks and shakings.
The lightkeeper's assistant smiled in spite of himself.
“Who named him Job?” he asked.
“Henry G.'s cousin from Boston. He said he seemed to be always sufferin' and fillin' the land with roarin's, like Job in the Bible. So, bein' as he hadn't no name except cuss words, that one stuck. I cal'late Henry G.'s glad enough to get rid of him. Ho! ho!”
“Did Mr. Atkins see his—this—did he see his present before he accepted it?”