daown to the barn to see ’em, an’ there was one, the cutest little critter I ever sot eyes on, and I’ve seen more ’n four pigs in my day,—­’t was a little black-spotted one, as spry as an ant, and the dreffullest knowin’ look out of its eyes!  I fellowshipped it right off, and I said, says I, ’Orrin, ef you’ll let me hev that ’ere little spotted feller, I’ll git a place for him, for I do take to him consarnedly.’  So he said I could, and I fetched him hum, and Miss Slater and me we kinder fed him up for a few days back, till he got sorter wonted, and I’m a-goin’ to fetch him to you.”

“But, Israel, I haven’t any place to put him in.”

“Well, that a’n’t nothin’ to hender.  I’ll jest fetch out them old boards out of the wood-shed, and knock up a little sty right off, daown by the end o’ the shed, and you ken keep your swill that I’ve hed before, and it’ll come handy.”

“But pigs are so dirty!”

“I don’t know as they be; they ha’n’t no great conveniences for washin’ ginerally; but I never heerd as they was dirtier ’n other critters, where they run wild.  An’ beside, that a’n’t goin’ to hender, nuther; I calculate to make it one o’ the chores to take keer of him; ’t won’t cost no more to you; and I ha’n’t no great opportunities to do things for folks that ‘s allers a-doin’ for me; so’t you needn’t be afeard, Miss Lucindy:  I love to.”

Miss Lucinda’s heart got the better of her judgment.  A nature that could feel so tenderly for its inferiors in the scale could not be deaf to the tiny voices of humanity, when they reached her solitude; and she thanked Israel for the pig so heartily that the old man’s face brightened still more, and his voice softened from its cracked harshness, as he said, clicking up and down the latch of the back-door,—­

“Well, I’m sure you’re as welcome as you are obleeged, and I’ll knock up that ’ere pen right off; he sha’n’t pester ye any,—­that’s a fact.”

Strange to say,—­yet perhaps it might have been expected from her proclivities,—­Miss Lucinda took an astonishing fancy to the pig.  Very few people know how intelligent an animal a pig is; but when one is regarded merely as pork and hams, one’s intellect is apt to fall into neglect:  a moral sentiment which applies out of Pigdom.  This creature would not have passed muster at a county fair; no Suffolk blood compacted and rounded him; he belonged to the “racers,” and skipped about his pen with the alacrity of a large flea, wiggling his curly tail as expressively as a dog’s, and “all but speakin’,” as Israel said.  He was always glad to see Miss Lucinda, and established a firm friendship with her dog Fun, a pretty, sentimental, German spaniel.  Besides, he kept tolerably clean by dint of Israel’s care, and thrust his long nose between the rails of his pen for grass, or fruit, or carrot- and beet-tops, with a knowing look out of his deep-set eyes that was never to be resisted by the soft-hearted spinster.  Indeed, Miss Lucinda