"It's lucky for you that he went when he did," said old Hen Root the next evening, when the story was told at Silas Dean's store at the Centre. "You're gettin' on, Mark," he continued solemnly. "If he'd a' stayed you might have got some kind of a stroke or other from over-laughin' yourself. I didn't dare to do any work for nigh a week after I first saw him telescopin' round in them velvet short pants."
"That's right," agreed Silas Dean heartily; "an' you ain't done any since—nor before," he concluded, carefully closing the cracker-barrel next to Hen.
It was, perhaps, the meeting with an eminent artist that aroused a new ambition in the skunk's mind. At any rate, from that day he began to haunt the farmyard. The first news that Mark had of his presence was when a motherly old hen, who had been sitting contentedly on twelve eggs for nearly a week, wandered around and around her empty nest clucking disconsolately. During the night some sly thief had slipped egg after egg out from under her brooding wings, so deftly that she never even clucked a protest. In the morning there were left only scattered egg-shells and a telltale track in the dust.
"Blamed old rascal," roared Mark. "First he loses me a good boarder an' now he's ate up a full clutch of pedigree white Wyandotte eggs. I'm goin' to shoot that skunk on sight."
Mark was mistaken. Early the next morning he
