Mr. Butterwick inquired if there was a target-shooting match over at the “King of Prussia;” but Brown didn’t appear to hear him, and passed serenely down the street.  At half-past eleven Brown came within hail again, and presently he marched up the yard with three departed cats and a blue poodle.

[Illustration:  THE GARDENER RETREATS]

Mr. Butterwick thought it was extraordinary, and he asked Brown if he was engaged in gunning for domestic animals in order to settle a bet.  But Brown only coughed a couple of times, closed one eye sagaciously and began to dig a fresh grave under the arbor.  When the last sad rites were over, he charged his gun as usual, rubbed his nose thoughtfully with his sleeve, took a drink at the pump and wandered away.

He had been gone about fifteen minutes, when Mr. Butterwick heard two shots in quick succession.  A minute later he saw Brown coming up the road with a considerable amount of velocity, pursued by Mr. Potts and a three-legged dog.  Brown kept ahead; and when he had shot through the gate, he dashed into the house and bolted the door.  Then Potts arrived with his dog, which stood by, looking as if it were very anxious to lunch upon somebody, while Potts explained to Butterwick that Brown had shot a leg off of his dog, and that he, Potts, intended to have satisfaction for the injury, if he had to go to law about it.

When Mr. Butterwick had pacified Potts and sent him away, Mr. Butterwick sought an interview with Brown: 

“Brown, you have been behaving in a most preposterous manner ever since you came here.  I employed you as a gardener, not as a gunner.  You have nearly killed a valuable animal belonging to Mr. Potts; and I’ll thank you to tell me what you mean, and right off, too.”

Brown winked again, cleared his throat, pulled up his shirt-collar and said,

“I was goin’ to quit soon as I ketched Potts’s dog.  He’d a bin splendid to bury out yer with the others.  Lemme tell you how it is:  The best thing to make grape-vines grow is dogs; bury ’em right down among the roots.  Some people prefer grandmothers and their other relations.  But gimme dogs and cats.  Soon as I seen them vines of yourn I said to myself, Them vines wants a few dogs, and I concluded to put in the first day rakin’ in all I could find.  I’m goin’ out again to-morrow, down the other road.”

But he didn’t.  Mr. Butterwick discharged him that night.  He was too enthusiastic for a gardener, and Mr. Butterwick thought that life might open out to him a brighter and more beautiful vista in some other capacity.

Subsequently, Mr. Butterwick concluded to attend to his garden himself, and early in the spring he received from the Congressman of our district a choice lot of assorted seeds brought from California by the Agricultural Department.  There were more than he wanted, so he gave a quantity of sugar-beet and onion seeds to Mr. Potts, and some turnip and radish seeds to Colonel Coffin; then he planted the remainder, consisting of turnip, cabbage, celery and beet seeds, in his own garden.