“I set up my little table and began to show them how easy it was to guess which shell the little pea was under.  The unlettered hinds gathered in a thick semicircle and began to nudge elbows and banter one another to bet.  Then was when Rufe ought to have single-footed up and called the turn on the little joker for a few tens and fives to get them started.  But, no Rufe.  I’d seen him two or three times walking about and looking at the side-show pictures with his mouth full of peanut candy; but he never came nigh.

“The crowd piked a little; but trying to work the shells without a capper is like fishing without a bait.  I closed the game with only forty-two dollars of the unearned increment, while I had been counting on yanking the yeomen for two hundred at least.  I went home at eleven and went to bed.  I supposed that the circus had proved too alluring for Rufe, and that he had succumbed to it, concert and all; but I meant to give him a lecture on general business principles in the morning.

“Just after Morpheus had got both my shoulders to the shuck mattress I hears a houseful of unbecoming and ribald noises like a youngster screeching with green-apple colic.  I opens my door and calls out in the hall for the widow lady, and when she sticks her head out, I says:  ’Mrs. Peevy, ma’am, would you mind choking off that kid of yours so that honest people can get their rest?’

“‘Sir,’ says she, ’it’s no child of mine.  It’s the pig squealing that your friend Mr. Tatum brought home to his room a couple of hours ago.  And if you are uncle or second cousin or brother to it, I’d appreciate your stopping its mouth, sir, yourself, if you please.’

“I put on some of the polite outside habiliments of external society and went into Rufe’s room.  He had gotten up and lit his lamp, and was pouring some milk into a tin pan on the floor for a dingy-white, half-grown, squealing pig.

“‘How is this, Rufe?’ says I.  ’You flimflammed in your part of the work to-night and put the game on crutches.  And how do you explain the pig?  It looks like back-sliding to me.’

“‘Now, don’t be too hard on me, Jeff,’ says he.  ’You know how long I’ve been used to stealing shoats.  It’s got to be a habit with me.  And to-night, when I see such a fine chance, I couldn’t help takin’ it.’

“‘Well,’ says I, ’maybe you’ve really got kleptopigia.  And maybe when we get out of the pig belt you’ll turn your mind to higher and more remunerative misconduct.  Why you should want to stain your soul with such a distasteful, feeble-minded, perverted, roaring beast as that I can’t understand.’

“‘Why, Jeff,’ says he, ’you ain’t in sympathy with shoats.  You don’t understand ’em like I do.  This here seems to me to be an animal of more than common powers of ration and intelligence.  He walked half across the room on his hind legs a while ago.’

“‘Well, I’m going back to bed,’ says I.  ’See if you can impress it upon your friend’s ideas of intelligence that he’s not to make so much noise.’