Merchant lets the matter drop.

But the neighbors kept after this cormorant fellow, worked one beastly squeeze or another, ingenious baiting, devilish--Rot! you know their neighborhoods better than I! Well, they pushed him down-hill--poor devil, showing that's always possible, no bottom! He brooded, and all that, till he thought the merchant and the Jesus religion were the cause of all.

So bang he goes down the pole,--gloriously drunk,--marches into his enemy's shop, and uses that knife.

The joke is now on the merchant, eh ?" "Just a moment," begged the padre.

"One thread I don't follow--the religion.