Old Stories 241
“Tf it isn’t pure silver
It only maims and doesn’t kill her.”
cheating the devil
A farmer who had no money wanted a barn. Indeed, he wanted the barn very badly. The man had just a shed or two back of his little house, and it did not seem to him he could get along without a barn much longer possibly. Now, the Devil knew very well how the man was feeling; and one day he went to the man, and said he’d build him a barn. So they fixed up a bargain between them. For putting up the barn the Devil was to have the man’s soul when he died; but the work must be done before the first rooster crew in the morning, or the bargain was off. All that night the man heard the Devil hammering and hammering away up the hill a little ways, where he was building the barn. A while before daylight the man got up, and went out the back door to where he had a slab shed he kept his hens in. He stopped before the door, and made an imitation of crowing, and the old rooster answered him. That knocked the bargain all to pieces, and the Devil got well cheated that time. The man
