David had said to him once when he suspected that John’s ideas might have sustained something of a shock, “A hoss-trade ain’t like anythin’ else.  A feller may be straighter ‘n a string in ev’rythin’ else, an’ never tell the truth—­that is, the hull truth—­about a hoss.  I trade hosses with hoss-traders.  They all think they know as much as I do, an’ I dunno but what they do.  They hain’t learnt no diff’rent anyway, an’ they’ve had chances enough.  If a feller come to me that didn’t think he knowed anythin’ about a hoss, an’ wanted to buy on the square, he’d git, fur’s I knew, square treatment.  At any rate I’d tell him all ’t I knew.  But when one o’ them smart Alecks comes along and cal’lates to do up old Dave, why he’s got to take his chances, that’s all.  An’ mind ye,” asserted David, shaking his forefinger impressively, “it ain’t only them fellers.  I’ve ben wuss stuck two three time by church members in good standin’ than anybody I ever dealed with.  Take old Deakin Perkins.  He’s a terrible feller fer church bus’nis; c’n pray an’ psalm-sing to beat the Jews, an’ in spiritual matters c’n read his title clear the hull time, but when it comes to hoss-tradin’ you got to git up very early in the mornin’ or he’ll skin the eyeteeth out of ye.  Yes, sir!  Scat my ——!  I believe the old critter makes hosses!  But the deakin,” added David, “he, he, he, he! the deakin hain’t hardly spoke to me fer some consid’able time, the deakin hain’t.  He, he, he!

“Another thing,” he went on, “the’ ain’t no gamble like a hoss.  You may think you know him through an’ through, an’ fust thing you know he’ll be cuttin’ up a lot o’ didos right out o’ nothin’.  It stands to reason that sometimes you let a hoss go all on the square—­as you know him—­an’ the feller that gits him don’t know how to hitch him or treat him, an’ he acts like a diff’rent hoss, an’ the feller allows you swindled him.  You see, hosses gits used to places an’ ways to a certain extent, an’ when they’re changed, why they’re apt to act diff’rent.  Hosses don’t know but dreadful little, really.  Talk about hoss sense—­wa’al, the’ ain’t no such thing.”

Thus spoke David on the subject of his favorite pursuit and pastime, and John thought then that he could understand and condone some things he had seen and heard, at which at first he was inclined to look askance.  But this matter of the Widow Cullom’s was a different thing, and as he realized that he was expected to play a part, though a small one, in it, his heart sank within him that he had so far cast his fortunes upon the good will of a man who could plan and carry out so heartless and cruel an undertaking as that which had been revealed to him that afternoon.  He spent the evening in his room trying to read, but the widow’s affairs persistently thrust themselves upon his thoughts.  All the unpleasant stories he had heard of David came to his mind, and he remembered with misgiving some things which at the time had seemed regular and right enough, but which took on a different color in the light in which he found himself recalling them.  He debated with himself whether he should not decline to send Mrs. Cullom the notice as he had been instructed, and left it an open question when he went to bed.