“If I could only get rid of him without knowing what became of him!” exclaimed Miss Lucinda, squeezing her forefinger with great earnestness, and looking both puzzled and pained.

“If Mees Lucinda would pairmit?” said a voice behind her.

She turned round to see Monsieur Leclerc on his crutches, just in the parlor-door.

“I shall, Mees, myself dispose of Piggee, if it please.  I can.  I shall have no sound; he shall to go away like a silent snow, to trouble you no more, never!”

“Oh, Sir! if you could!  But I don’t see how!”

“If Mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain.  I shall have him to go by magique to fiery land.”

Fairy-land, probably!  But Miss Lucinda did not perceive the equivoque.

“Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel.  I shall have the aid of myself and one good friend that I have; and some night when you rise of the morning, he shall not be there.”

Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.

“I am greatly obliged,—­I shall be, I mean,” said she.

“Well, I’m glad enough to wash my hands on’t,” said Israel.  “I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he’s a-gettin’ too big to be handy; ‘n’ it’s one comfort abaout critters, you ken get rid on ’em somehaow when they’re more plague than profit.  But folks has got to be let alone, excep’ the Lord takes ’em; an’ He don’t allers see fit.”

What added point and weight to these final remarks of old Israel was the well-known fact that he suffered at home from the most pecking and worrying of wives, and had been heard to say in some moment of unusual frankness that he “didn’t see how’t could be sinful to wish Miss Slater was in heaven, for she’d be lots better off, and other folks too!”

Miss Lucinda never knew what befell her pig one fine September night; she did not even guess that a visit paid to Monsieur by one of his pupils, a farmer’s daughter just out of Dalton, had anything to do with this enlevement; she was sound asleep in her bed up-stairs, when her guest shod his crutches with old gloves, and limped out to the garden-gate by dawn, where he and the farmer tolled the animal out of his sty and far down the street by tempting red apples, and then Farmer Steele took possession of him, and he was seen no more.  No, the first thing Miss Lucinda knew of her riddance was when Israel put his head into the back-door that same morning, some four hours afterward, and said, with a significant nod,—­

“He’s gone!”

After all his other chores were done, Israel had a conference with Monsieur Leclerc, and the two sallied into the garden, and in an hour had dismantled the low dwelling, cleared away the wreck, levelled and smoothed its site, and Monsieur, having previously provided himself with an Isabella-grape-vine, planted it on this forsaken spot, and trained it carefully against the end of the shed:  strange to say, though