Widow Crane's sow? I shorely was a heap perplexed."

"That was curious." The Hon. Sam laughed:

"Well, sir, them intelligent pigs used both them sows as mothers,
and may be they had another mother somewhere else. They would
breakfast with the Widow Crane's sow and take supper with the
squire's sow. And so them witnesses, too, was naturally
perplexed."

Hale waited while the Hon. Sam puffed his pipe into a glow:

"Believin', as I do, that the most important principle in law is
mutually forgivin' and a square division o' spoils, I suggested a
compromise. The widow said the squire was an old rascal an' thief
and he'd never sink a tooth into one of them shoats, but that her
lawyer was a gentleman--meanin' me--and the squire said the widow
had been blackguardin' him all over town and he'd see her in
heaven before she got one, but that HIS lawyer was a prince of the
realm: so the other lawyer took one and I got the other."

"What became of the third?"

The Hon. Sam was an ardent disciple of Sir Walter Scott:

"Well, just now the mayor is a-playin' Gurth to that little runt
for costs."

Outside, the wheels of the stage rattled, and as half a dozen
strangers trooped in, the Hon. Sam waved his hand: "Things is