about it. And one day he was lying on the bed gaping, and that frog
unexpectedly made up its mind to come up to ask Barnes to eat more
carefully, maybe, and it jumped out on the counterpane. After looking
about a bit it came up and tried three or four times to hop back,
but he kept his mouth shut, and killed the frog with the back of a
hair-brush. Ever since then he runs his drinking-water through a
strainer, and he hates frogs worse than you and me hate pison. Now,
that's the honest truth about Barnes; you ask him if it ain't."

Then Keyser bought some tobacco and went home.




CHAPTER VI.

_THE EDITOR OF THE PATRIOT_.


The editor of the village paper, _The Patriot and Advertiser_, is
Major Slott; and a very clever journalist he is. Even his bitterest
adversary, the editor of _The Evening Mail_, in the town above us on
the river, admits that. In the last political campaign, indeed, _The
Mail_ undertook to tell how it was that the major acquired such a
taste for journalism. The story was that shortly after he was born the
doctor ordered that the baby should be fed upon goat's milk. This was
procured from a goat that was owned by an Irish woman who lived in the
rear of the office of _The Weekly Startler_ and fed her goat chiefly
upon the exchanges which came to that journal. The consequence,
according to _The Mail_, was that young Slott was fed entirely upon