clam-diggers into the surf. Hair the color of straw matting, and eyes as black and shiny as the best harness blacking—think of that!
“Me? Well, it’s either me or Bill Watson. She treats us both equal. Bill is all to the psychopathic about her; and me?—well, you saw me plating the road-bed of the Great Maroon Way with silver to-night. That was on account of Laura. I was spiflicated, Your Highness, and I wot not of what I wouldst.
“How? Why, old Hildebrant says to me and Bill this afternoon: ‘Boys, one riddle have I for you gehabt haben. A young man who cannot riddles antworten, he is not so good by business for ein family to provide—is not that—hein?’ And he hands us a riddle—a conundrum, some calls it—and he chuckles interiorly and gives both of us till to-morrow morning to work out the answer to it. And he says whichever of us guesses the repartee end of it goes to his house o’ Wednesday night to his daughter’s birthday party. And it means Laura for whichever of us goes, for she’s naturally aching for a husband, and it’s either me or Bill Watson, for old Hildebrant likes us both, and wants her to marry somebody that’ll carry on the business after he’s stitched his last pair of traces.
“The riddle? Why, it was this: ‘What kind of a hen lays the longest?’ Think of that! What kind of a hen lays the longest? Ain’t it like a Dutchman to risk a man’s happiness on a fool proposition like that? Now,
