“I’m only givin’ P.T.  Barnum his leg-exercise,” said Hiram, recovering the rooster and sticking him under one arm while he shook hands with his caller.  “I don’t expect to ever match him again in this God-forsaken country, but there’s some comfort in keepin’ him in trainin’.  Pinch them thighs, Cap’n!  Ain’t they the wickin’?”

“I sh’d hate to try to eat ’em,” said the Cap’n, gingerly poking his stubby finger against the rooster’s leg.

“Eat ’em!” snapped the showman, raking the horns of his long mustache irritably away from his mouth.  “You talk like the rest of these farmers round here that never heard of a hen bein’ good for anything except to lay eggs and be et for a Thanksgivin’ dinner.”  He held the rooster a-straddle his arm, his broad hand on its back, and shook him under the Cap’n’s nose.  “I’ve earnt more’n a thousand dollars with P.T.—­and that’s a profit in the hen business that all the condition powders this side of Tophet couldn’t fetch.”

“A thousand dollars!” echoed Cap’n Sproul, stuffing his pipe.  He gazed at P.T. with new interest.  “He must have done some fightin’ in his day.”

“Fight!” cried the showman.  He tossed the rooster upon the burlap once more.  “Fight!  Look at that leg action!  That’s the best yaller-legged, high-station game-cock that ever pecked his way out of a shell.  I’ve taken all comers ’twixt Hoorah and Hackenny, and he ain’t let me down yet.  Look at them brad-awls of his!”

“Mebbe all so, but I don’t like hens, not for a minit,” growled the first selectman, squinting sourly through his tobacco-smoke at the dancing fowl.

Hiram got a saucer from a shelf inside the barn and set it on the ground.

“Eat your chopped liver, P.T.,” he commanded; “trainin’ is over.”

He relighted his stub of cigar and bent proud gaze on the bird.

“No, sir,” pursued the Cap’n, “I ain’t got no use for a hen unless it’s settin’, legs up, on a platter, and me with a carvin’-knife.”

“Always felt that way?” inquired Hiram.

“Not so much as I have sence I’ve been tryin’ to start my garden this spring.  As fur back as the time I was gittin’ the seed in, them hens of Widder Sidene Pike, that lives next farm to mine, began their hellishness, with that old wart-legged ostrich of a rooster of her’n to lead ’em.  They’d almost peck the seeds out of my hand, and the minit I’d turn my back they was over into that patch, right foot, left foot, kick heel and toe, and swing to pardners—­and you couldn’t see the sun for dirt.  And at every rake that rooster lifts soil enough to fill a stevedore’s coal-bucket.”

“Why don’t you shoot ’em?” advised Hiram, calmly.

“Me—­the first s’lectman of this town out poppin’ off a widder’s hens?  That would be a nice soundin’ case when it got into court, wouldn’t it?”

“Get into court first and sue her,” advised the militant Hiram.

“I donno as I’ve ever said it to you, but I’ve al’ays said it to close friends,” stated the Cap’n, earnestly, “that there are only three things on earth I’m afraid of, and them are:  pneumony, bein’ struck by lightnin’, and havin’ a land-shark git the law on me.  There ain’t us’ly no help for ye.”