"We'll come over here an' learn ye how to enjoy yerself some day," one of them said.
"I'm pretty well posted on that subject now," Samson answered.
It is likely that they would have begun his schooling at once but when they came out into the store and saw the big Vermonter standing in the candlelight their laughter ceased for a moment. Bill was among them with a well-filled bottle in his hand.
He and the others got into a wagon which had been waiting at the door and drove away with a wild Indian whoop from the lips of one of the young men.
Samson sat down in the candlelight and Abe in a moment arrived.
"I'm getting awful sick o' this business," said Abe.
"I kind o' guess you don't like the whisky part of it," Samson remarked, as he felt a piece of cloth.
"I hate it," Abe went on. "It don't seem respectable any longer."
"Back in Vermont we don't like the whisky business."
"You're right, it breeds deviltry and disorder. In my youth I was surrounded by whisky. Everybody drank it. A bottle or a jug of liquor was thought to be as legitimate a piece of merchandise as a pound of tea or a yard of calico. That's the way I've always thought of it. But lately I've begun to get the Yankee notion about whisky. When it gets into bad company it can raise the devil."