Smily he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a long time, and at last he says, “I do
wonder what in the nation that frog throwed off for—I wonder if there ain’t something the matter with
him—her ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow—and he ketched Dan’l by the nap of the neck, and
lifted him up and says, “Why blame my cats if he don’t weigh five pound”—and turned him upside
down, and he belched out about a double-handful of shot. And then he see how it was, and he was the
maddest man—he set the frog down and took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And—
[Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front-yard, and got up to go and see what was
wanted.] And turning to me as he moved away, he said: “Just sit where you are, stranger, and rest
easy—I ain’t going to be gone a second.”