Do you ever think of
your latter end?"
"Thee had better think of thine, friend," I whispered, assuming the
manner of a quaker for fun, "for Peter is a rough customer, and won't
stand upon ceremony."
"Amhic an aibhisteir (son of the devil)," said Peter, shaking his fist
at him, "if she don't like it, she had better go. It's her own house,
and she will do what she likes in it. Faat does she want?"
"I want the man called Samuel Slick," said he.
"Verily," sais I, "friend, I am that man, and wilt thee tell me who
thee is that wantest me, and where thee livest?"
"Men call me," he said, "Jehu Judd, and when to home, I live in Quaco
in New Brunswick."
I was glad of that, because it warn't possible the critter could know
anything of me, and I wanted to draw him out.
"And what does thee want, friend?" I said.
"I come to trade with you, to sell you fifty barrels of mackerel, and
to procure some nets for the fishery, and some manufactures, commonly
called domestics."
"Verily," sais I, "thee hast an odd way of opening a trade, methinks,
friend Judd. Shaking quakers dance piously, as thee mayest have heard,
and dost thee think thy conduct seemly? What mayest thee be, friend?"
"A trader," he replied.
"Art thee not a fisher of men, friend, as well as a fisher of fish?"
"I am a Christian man," he said, "of the sect called 'come-outers,'1
and have had experience, and when I meet the brethren, sometimes I
speak a word in season.
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