"The beer," said Mr. Gladstone, laughing till the tears came into his eyes, "had been heavily jalaped."
[DRAWING A BADGER]
t was a sleepy little town, far from the busy world, almost hidden away in the backwoods. During the long summer days, small boys—and sometimes grown-up folks as well—hardly knew what to do to pass the time. It was an event of some importance, therefore, when one afternoon Grizzly Jim, the trapper, brought to the only hostelry the settlement could boast a live badger. He carried it in a big bag, and shook it out over the half-door into the empty stable, that the hotel-keeper and his friends might have a look at the shy and rarely-seen animal. At that hour there were not many people about, so when the other half of the stable door was drawn to, and the captive left alone, the news of its arrival was as yet known only to a few.
"HE SHOOK IT OUT OVER THE HALF-DOOR."
Among these few, however, was the hotel-keeper's son Dick, a youngster about twelve years old, who had inspected the badger with keenest interest and a critical eye. He had also listened to every word of the conversation between Grizzly Jim and his father, and had gathered that they were going to pack up the beast in a box and send it off next day by the railroad to a city, some hundreds of miles distant, where all manner of strange creatures were kept in cages in a Zoo. So the badger would be lodged in the hotel for one night only, and Dick reflected that if any fun was to be got out of "the comical cuss," as he called it, there was no time to be lost.