“Well, you’ll know next time, if you don’t keep them hogs o’ yourn out of my corn. Why, that confounded old sow can destroy more corn in one night than you are worth.”
“Yes, Mars Jones, dat de trufe,” meekly assented the old man.
Mars Jones, warming to the subject, now waxed more and more eloquent over his grievances, until, having exhausted his pent up wrath, he had leisure to observe old Jerry’s ashen face and shaking limbs, and he exclaimed:—
“Why, what’s the matter with you? are you sick?”
“Yes, Mars Jones, I’s been po’ly dis liblong day, an’ I’s gittin’ sassifrax for to make me a little drap o’ tea, I’s got sich a mis’ry.”
“Sassafras!” here broke in Mars Jones; and, good-natured, despite his roughness, he took from his pocket a tickler, and handing Jerry a dram, said:
“Drink this, you old blockhead. Sassifrax, indeed!—what good you reckon sassifrax goin’ do you?”
With a scrape and a bow and a “Thank ye, Marster,” the old man gulped down the dram, and Mars Jones, replacing his tickler, was turning away, when his foot slipped in something, and looking down he saw that it was blood.
The dram had put so much heart into the old man that he was able to reply glibly to Mars Jones’s questions.
“Its jes’ wha’ I’s been markin’ hogs, Marster.”