country won't melt the solder off."

"I tell you what, pedler, we are more likely to put you in hot water
than try any more of your ware in that way. But where's your
plunder?--let us see this fine lot of notions you speak of"--was the
speech of the colonel already so much referred to, and whose coffee-pot
bottom furnished so broad a foundation for the trial. He was a wild and
roving person, to whom the tavern, and the racecourse, and the cockpit,
from his very boyhood up, had been as the breath of life, and with whom
the chance of mischief was never willingly foregone. But the pedler was
wary, and knew his man. The lurking smile and sneer of the speaker had
enough in them for the purposes of warning, and he replied evasively:--

"Well, colonel, you shall see them by next Tuesday or Wednesday. I
should be glad to have a trade with you--the money's no object--and if
you have furs, or skins, or anything that you like to get off your
hands, there's no difficulty, that I can see, to a long bargain."

"But why not trade now, Bunce?--what's to hinder us now? I sha'n't be in
the village after Monday."

"Well, then, colonel, that'll just suit me, for I did calkilate to call
on you at the farm, on my way into the nation where I'm going looking
out for furs."

"Yes, and live on the best for a week, under some pretence that your nag
is sick, or you sick, or something in the way of a start--then go off,
cheat, and laugh at me in the bargain. I reckon, old boy, you don't come
over me in that way again; and I'm not half done with you yet about the
kettles. That story of yours about the hot and cold may do for the