unhappy beast.  Even the trees on Reuben’s premises had a gnarled and knotted appearance.  The bark wept little sickly tears of gum, and the branches grew awry, as if they felt the continual discord, and made sorry faces at each other behind their owner’s back.  His fields were red with sorrel, or run over with mullein.  Every thing seemed as hard and arid as his own visage.  Every day, he cursed the town and the neighborhood, because they poisoned his dogs, and stoned his hens, and shot his cats.  Continual law-suits involved him in so much expense, that he had neither time nor money to spend on the improvement of his farm.

Against Joe Smith, a poor laborer in the neighborhood, he had brought three suits in succession.  Joe said he had returned a spade he borrowed, and Reuben swore he had not.  He sued Joe, and recovered damages, for which he ordered the sheriff to seize his pig.  Joe, in his wrath, called him an old swindler, and a curse to the neighborhood.  These remarks were soon repeated to Reuben.  He brought an action for slander, and recovered twenty-five cents.  Provoked at the laugh this occasioned, he watched for Joe to pass by, and set his big dog upon him, screaming furiously, “Call me an old swindler again, will you.”  An evil spirit is more contagious than the plague.  Joe went home and scolded his wife, and boxed little Joe’s ears, and kicked the cat; and not one of them knew what it was all for.  A fortnight after, Reuben’s big dog was found dead by poison.  Whereupon he brought another action against Joe Smith, and not being able to prove him guilty of the charge of dog-murder, he took his revenge by poisoning a pet lamb belonging to Mrs. Smith.  Thus the bad game went on, with mutual worriment and loss.  Joe’s temper grew more and more vindictive, and the love of talking over his troubles at the grog-shop increased on him.  Poor Mrs. Smith cried, and said it was all owing to Reuben Black; for a better hearted man never lived than her Joe, when she first married him.

* * * * *

=_Robert M. Bird, 1803-1854._= (Manual, p. 510.)

From “Nick of the Woods:  a Tale of Kentucky.”

=_295._= THE QUAKER HUNTSMAN.

“I have a thing to say to thee, which it concerns thee and the fair maid, thee cousin, to know.  There was a will, friend, a true and lawful last will and testament of thee deceased uncle, in which theeself and thee cousin was made the sole heirs of the same.  Truly, friend, I did take it from the breast of the villain that plotted thee ruin; but, truly, it was taken from me again, I know not how.”

“I have it safe,” said Roland, displaying it, for a moment, with great satisfaction, to Nathan’s eyes.  “It makes me master of wealth, which you, Nathan, shall be the first to share.  You must leave this wild life of the border, go with me to Virginia—­”