they’ll hammer the soul out of him afore they let him git out from under the iron.  I don’t reckon they kin cure him, for what’s bred in the bone, you know, won’t come out of the flesh; but they’ll so bedevil bone and flesh, that I reckon he’ll be the last Yankee that ever comes to practice again in this Chestatee country.  Maybe, he ain’t deserving of much worse than they kin do.  Maybe, he ain’t a scamp of the biggest wethers.  His rascality ain’t to be measured.  Why, he kin walk through a man’s pockets, jest as the devil goes through a crack or a keyhole, and the money will naterally stick to him, jest as ef he was made of gum turpentine.  His very face is a sort of kining [coining] machine.  His look says dollars and cents; and its always your dollars and cents, and he kines them out of your hands into his’n, jest with a roll of his eye, and a mighty leetle turn of his finger.  He cheats in everything, and cheats everybody.  Thar’s not an old woman in the country that don’t say her prayers back’ards when she thinks of Jared Bunce.  Thar’s his tin-wares and his wood-wares—­his coffeepots and kettles, all put together with saft sodder—­that jest go to pieces, as ef they had nothing else to do.  And he kin blarney you so—­and he’s so quick at a mortal lie—­and he’s got jest a good reason for everything—­and he’s so sharp at a ’scuse [excuse] that it’s onpossible to say where he’s gwine to have you, and what you’re a gwine to lose, and how you’ll get off at last, and in what way he’ll cheat you another time.  He’s been at this business, in these diggings, now about three years.  The regilators have swore a hundred times to square off with him; but he’s always got off tell now; sometimes by new inventions—­sometimes by bible oaths—­and last year, by regilarly cutting dirt [flight].  He’s hardly a chance to git cl’ar now, for the regilators are pretty much up to all his tricks, and he’s mighty nigh to ride a rail for a colt, and get new scores ag’in old scores, laid on with the smartest hickories in natur’.”

“And who are the regulators?” asked the youth, languidly.

“What! you from Georgy, and never to hear tell of the regilators?  Why, that’s the very place, I reckon, where the breed begun.  The regilators are jest then, you see, our own people.  We hain’t got much law and justice in these pairts, and when the rascals git too sassy and plentiful, we all turn out, few or many, and make a business of cleaning out the stables.  We turn justices, and sheriffs, and lawyers, and settle scores with the growing sinners.  We jine, hand in hand, agin such a chap as Jared Bunce, and set in judgment upon his evil-doings.  It’s a regilar court, though we make it up ourselves, and app’ints our own judges and juries, and pass judgment ‘cordin’ to the case.  Ef it’s the first offence, or only a small one, we let’s the fellow off with only a taste of the hickory.  Ef it’s a tough case, and an old sinner, we give him a belly-full.  Ef the whole country’s roused, then Judge Lynch puts on his black cap, and the rascal takes a hard ride on a rail, a duck in the pond, and a perfect seasoning of hickories, tell thar ain’t much left of him, or, may be, they don’t stop to curry him, but jest halters him at once to the nearest swinging limb.”