"'But you would sell him, wouldn't you?' he asked.
"'Well,' I said, slowlike, as if I had some difficulty in recalling exactly what we'd been talking about, 'I had sorter thought that a good mule would do the work I have to do better than a hoss.'
"'What would you take for him?' Wilks come at me again, and he looked kinder anxious. 'I want a hoss to send out to my plantation. They are needing one about like yours.'
"'It will take a hundred and fifty of any man's money to buy him,' I says. 'Friend nor foe don't get him for a cent less.'
"Well, we went out to the hoss, and Wilks got astraddle of him, and, sir, he took him round the square in the purtiest rack you ever saw shuffle under a saddle. I saw Wilks thought I was his game, for his eyes was dancing as he lit and hitched.
"'How would a hundred and forty strike you, cash down?' he said.
"'I'm needing the other ten,' I said. 'I'm a one-price man. I know what I've got in that hoss' (and you bet I did), 'and you can take him or leave him. I didn't start the talk, nohow.'
"'Well, we won't fight over the ten,' he said, 'but here is one trouble, Alf. You are under age, and I don't often trade with minors. I don't know how your daddy may look at it, and I'm going to make this deal before witnesses so there won't be any trouble later.'
"'You'll not have any trouble with Pa,' says I. 'I'll guarantee that.'
"Well, Wilks called up two of his clerks to see the money handed to me, and with the wad of bills in my pocket I lit out for home. But the nearer I got to the house the more I got afraid Pa wouldn't endorse what I'd done, and so I felt sorter funny when him and Ma met me at the gate, their eyes wide open in curiosity to know what I'd done.