“I didn’t hesitate any longer, but I took the bet, thinking that Ephraim’s mind was failing, and that it was a Christian duty in his friends to see that if he did fool away his money, it should go into their pockets instead of the pockets of outsiders. But, as you will see, Ephraim didn’t lose that fifty dollars.
“Early the next morning Ephraim had a couple of masons employed in turning his brick smoke-house into a chicken-house, and he had two dozen chickens with their legs tied lying on the grass waiting for the chicken-house to be finished. The masons broke a hole through the side of the house and lined it with steel rods about four feet long, which Ephraim had bought to use in some experiments in gun-making that he was always working at. The rods were set in a circle which was about a foot and a half wide at one end and tapered to about four inches at the other end. The arrangement was just like the wire entrance to a mouse-trap, of the sort that is meant to catch mice alive and never does it. It was nothing less than a darky-trap, although Ephraim pretended that it was a combined ventilator and front door for the chickens. The masons, so far as I could judge, thought that Ephraim’s mind was going fast, and I made up my mind that it would be a sin to let the man bet with anybody who would be disposed to take advantage of his infirmity.
“‘DUNNO!’”
“The trap was finished before dark, and baited with two dozen young chickens. I came by the place a second time about sunset, just as Ephraim was locking up his chicken-house, and I saw a small darky boy leaning on the fence. I asked him where he came from, but he only said ‘Dunno.’ I found out afterward that he came from a house at least ten miles away, and that those two dozen chickens had drawn him there wasn’t a shadow of doubt in my mind. At the time, however, I was a little afraid that Ephraim had begun to import colored labor, and that there was some trick about his bet that might prove that his mind was all right. Two days afterward I went down to the pasture and found sixteen darkies digging away at that ditch and Ephraim superintending with a twenty-five-cent cigar in his mouth. ‘Come to pay that fifty dollars, I suppose!’ he said when he saw me. ‘You can wait till the ditch is finished, which will be some time to-day. You see I was as good as my word.’
“I asked him to explain how he had collected his darkies, and being in unusually good spirits he told me about it.
“He had made his trap just large enough to admit a good-sized darky, who could push the steel rods apart as he crawled in but who couldn’t crawl out again, no matter how hard he might try. The morning after he had set the trap Ephraim took his shot-gun and went down to his chicken-house. He found that the night’s catch had been larger than he had hoped. There were sixteen colored men of different sizes sitting on the ground or leaning up against the side of the house. There was a good deal of wool and cloth sticking to the ends of the steel rods, and some of the younger darkies looked as if they had been fighting with wild-cats, but they didn’t try to explain things. Besides the darkies, there were two white tramps in the trap, but Ephraim just kicked them into the streets without even proposing work to them. Then he came back and told the darkies that the legislature had just passed a bill making it felony to break into a chicken-house, and that he was very much afraid that they would be hung and dissected, unless they could show him some reason for being merciful to them.
“The darkies were frightened, besides being hungry and cold, and when Ephraim said that he had a job of ditching to be done, and that if they would do it for him he would let them off scot-free, they were delighted, and the whole chicken-house was lit up with their teeth. They went into that ditch a happy and contented gang and finished it before night. Ephraim was a liberal man, and considering that he had won fifty dollars and had got his ditch finished for nothing, he was disposed to be generous. So he gave the darkies a lot of good advice and informed them that, with a view of removing temptation from their way, he should sell his chickens and go out of the business. The darkies went away as happy as if they had been well paid, and the next morning there wasn’t a darky in the whole town. They had gone back to their homes, or else they had been drawn somewhere else by other chickens.
“Do I mean to say that Ephraim had not made arrangements with some one to send him those sixteen darkies? That is just what I do mean to say. When he fitted up his chicken-house he had no more idea where his darkies would come from than I had, but he knew that the chickens would draw darkies and that his trap would hold them, so he felt that he had a sure thing. I have no more doubt that those darkies were drawn to Ephraim’s place by those chickens than I have that a magnet will draw a needle. I can’t explain how it was done, but I believe it all the same. It is what is called a mystery, and the good book says that the less you try to explain mysteries the better.”