THE MEETING. 379 



an errand in the opposite direction to that which I 

 was going. To be plain, before I sold Champ I 

 thought that Mary was taking a shine to me ; but after 

 the horse disappeared I found that all of her favors 

 were for him, and not his owner. 



"That spring it seemed as if everything about the 

 place was going at sixes and sevens. Lem greeted 

 me with a distant nod when we met, which was very 

 seldom, and finally, even old Peter Pickle failed to 

 come near the stable to loaf for an hour or two. It 

 looked to me so much like a case of freeze out that I 

 became disgusted, and had just about made up my 

 mind to sell out and emigrate, when one afternoon I 

 met Lem with Champ hooked to a top wagon on the 

 side road near the gravel pit. I stopped and signalled 

 for him to do so. As I did so he took his horse over 

 to the left hand side of the road and pulled up with 

 the seat of his wagon opposite my dashboard, and so 

 close that the hubs almost touched. Had he been 

 driving any other horse than Champ it would have 

 given me a chill to see him sitting there with only a 

 foot or so of turf between him and the edge of a 

 steep bank. 



"As he tipped the top of his wagon back, Lem 

 asked me what I wanted, saying it in a manner that 

 was anything but encouraging. I told him what had 

 been said about the trade and that the remarks had 

 been traced to him, and also reminded him that when 

 we traded it was on his proposition, not mine, as I 

 did not want to let Champ go. I could feel myself 

 getting a little warm as I talked, for it was an aggra- 

 vation to have him sit there and never say a word, 

 while Champ would keep turning his head to look at 



