initial commit of ebook 587HEADmain

2 files changed, 10900 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/old/dsown10.txt b/old/dsown10.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8c70f39
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/dsown10.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,10900 @@
+**The Project Gutenberg Etext Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis**
+# 2 in our series by Don Marquis
+
+
+Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check
+the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!!
+
+Please take a look at the important information in this header.
+We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an
+electronic path open for the next readers.  Do not remove this.
+
+
+**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
+
+**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971**
+
+*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations*
+
+Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and
+further information is included below.  We need your donations.
+
+
+Danny's Own Story, by Don Marquis
+
+July, 1996 [Etext #587]
+
+
+**The Project Gutenberg Etext of Dsown's Own Story by Don Marquis**
+*****This file should be named dsown10.txt or dsown10.zip******
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, dsown11.txt.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, dsown10a.txt.
+
+
+This etext was created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska,
+from a first edition of Danny's Own Story provided by Jim Ennes.
+
+
+We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance
+of the official release dates, for time for better editing.
+
+Please note:  neither this list nor its contents are final till
+midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement.
+The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at
+Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month.  A
+preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment
+and editing by those who wish to do so.  To be sure you have an
+up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes
+in the first week of the next month.  Since our ftp program has
+a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a
+look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a
+new copy has at least one byte more or less.
+
+
+Information about Project Gutenberg (one page)
+
+We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work.  The
+fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take
+to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright
+searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc.  This
+projected audience is one hundred million readers.  If our value
+per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2
+million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text
+files per month:  or 400 more Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800.
+If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the
+total should reach 80 billion Etexts.
+
+The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext
+Files by the December 31, 2001.  [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion]
+This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers,
+which is only 10% of the present number of computer users.  2001
+should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it
+will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001.
+
+
+We need your donations more than ever!
+
+
+All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg/BU":  and are
+tax deductible to the extent allowable by law. (BU = Benedictine
+University).  (Subscriptions to our paper newsletter go to BU.)
+
+For these and other matters, please mail to:
+
+Project Gutenberg
+P. O. Box  2782
+Champaign, IL 61825
+
+When all other email fails try our Executive Director:
+Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com>
+
+We would prefer to send you this information by email
+(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail).
+
+******
+If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please
+FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives:
+[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type]
+
+ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu
+login:  anonymous
+password:  your@login
+cd etext/etext90 through /etext96
+or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information]
+dir [to see files]
+get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files]
+GET INDEX?00.GUT
+for a list of books
+and
+GET NEW GUT for general information
+and
+MGET GUT* for newsletters.
+
+**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor**
+(Three Pages)
+
+
+***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START***
+Why is this "Small Print!" statement here?  You know: lawyers.
+They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with
+your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from
+someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our
+fault.  So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement
+disclaims most of our liability to you.  It also tells you how
+you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to.
+
+*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT
+By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
+etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept
+this "Small Print!" statement.  If you do not, you can receive
+a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by
+sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person
+you got it from.  If you received this etext on a physical
+medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request.
+
+ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS
+This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-
+tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor
+Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association at
+Benedictine University (the "Project").  Among other
+things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright
+on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and
+distribute it in the United States without permission and
+without paying copyright royalties.  Special rules, set forth
+below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext
+under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark.
+
+To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable
+efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain
+works.  Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any
+medium they may be on may contain "Defects".  Among other
+things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
+intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged
+disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer
+codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment.
+
+LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES
+But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below,
+[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this
+etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including
+legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR
+UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT,
+INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE
+OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE
+POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.
+
+If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of
+receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any)
+you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that
+time to the person you received it from.  If you received it
+on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and
+such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement
+copy.  If you received it electronically, such person may
+choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to
+receive it electronically.
+
+THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS".  NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS
+TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT
+LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A
+PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
+
+Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or
+the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the
+above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you
+may have other legal rights.
+
+INDEMNITY
+You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors,
+officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost
+and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or
+indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause:
+[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification,
+or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect.
+
+DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm"
+You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by
+disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this
+"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg,
+or:
+
+[1]  Only give exact copies of it.  Among other things, this
+     requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the
+     etext or this "small print!" statement.  You may however,
+     if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable
+     binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form,
+     including any form resulting from conversion by word pro-
+     cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as
+     *EITHER*:
+
+     [*]  The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and
+          does *not* contain characters other than those
+          intended by the author of the work, although tilde
+          (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may
+          be used to convey punctuation intended by the
+          author, and additional characters may be used to
+          indicate hypertext links; OR
+
+     [*]  The etext may be readily converted by the reader at
+          no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent
+          form by the program that displays the etext (as is
+          the case, for instance, with most word processors);
+          OR
+
+     [*]  You provide, or agree to also provide on request at
+          no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the
+          etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC
+          or other equivalent proprietary form).
+
+[2]  Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this
+     "Small Print!" statement.
+
+[3]  Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the
+     net profits you derive calculated using the method you
+     already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  If you
+     don't derive profits, no royalty is due.  Royalties are
+     payable to "Project Gutenberg Association / Benedictine
+     University" within the 60 days following each
+     date you prepare (or were legally required to prepare)
+     your annual (or equivalent periodic) tax return.
+
+WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO?
+The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time,
+scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty
+free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution
+you can think of.  Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg
+Association / Benedictine University".
+
+*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+DANNY'S OWN STORY               
+BY
+
+DON MARQUIS
+
+
+TO
+MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+HOW I come not to have a last name is a
+question that has always had more or less
+aggervation mixed up with it.  I might
+of had one jest as well as not if Old Hank Walters
+hadn't been so all-fired, infernal bull-headed about
+things in gineral, and his wife Elmira a blame sight
+worse, and both of  em ready to row at a minute's
+notice and stick to it forevermore.
+
+Hank, he was considerable of a lusher.  One
+Saturday night, when he come home from the vil-
+lage in his usual fix, he stumbled over a basket that
+was setting on his front steps.  Then he got up and
+drawed back his foot unsteady to kick it plumb
+into kingdom come.  Jest then he hearn Elmira
+opening the door behind him, and he turned his
+head sudden.  But the kick was already started
+into the air, and when he turns he can't stop it.
+And so Hank gets twisted and falls down and steps
+on himself.  That basket lets out a yowl.
+
+"It's kittens," says Hank, still setting down and
+staring at that there basket.  All of which, you
+understand, I am a-telling you from hearsay, as
+the lawyers always asts you in court.
+
+Elmira, she sings out:
+
+"Kittens, nothing!  It's a baby!"
+
+And she opens the basket and looks in and it was
+me.
+
+"Hennerey Walters," she says -- picking me
+up, and shaking me at him like I was a crime, "Hen-
+nerey Walters, where did you get this here baby?"
+She always calls him Hennerey when she is getting
+ready to give him fits.
+
+Hank, he scratches his head, for he's kind o'
+confuddled, and thinks mebby he really has brought
+this basket with him.  He tries to think of all the
+places he has been that night.  But he can't think of
+any place but Bill Nolan's saloon.  So he says:
+
+"Elmira, honest, I ain't had but one drink all
+day."  And then he kind o' rouses up a little bit,
+and gets surprised and says:
+
+"That a BABY you got there, Elmira?"  And
+then he says, dignified: "So fur as that's consarned,
+Elmira, where did YOU get that there baby?"
+
+She looks at him, and she sees he don't really know
+where I come from.  Old Hank mostly was truth-
+ful when lickered up, fur that matter, and she
+knowed it, fur he couldn't think up no lies excepting
+a gineral denial when intoxicated up to the gills.
+
+Elmira looks into the basket.  They was one of
+them long rubber tubes stringing out of a bottle
+that was in it, and I had been sucking that bottle
+when interrupted.  And they wasn't nothing else
+in that basket but a big thick shawl which had
+been wrapped all around me, and Elmira often
+wore it to meeting afterward.  She goes inside
+and she looks at the bottle and me by the light,
+and Old Hank, he comes stumbling in afterward
+and sets down in a chair and waits to get Hail
+Columbia for coming home in that shape, so's he
+can row back agin, like they done every Saturday
+night.
+
+Blowed in the glass of the bottle was the name:
+"Daniel, Dunne and Company."  Anybody but
+them two old ignoramuses could of told right off
+that that didn't have nothing to do with me, but
+was jest the company that made them kind of
+bottles.  But she reads it out loud three or four
+times, and then she says:
+
+"His name is Daniel Dunne," she says.
+
+"And Company," says Hank, feeling right
+quarrelsome.
+
+"COMPANY hain't no name," says she.
+
+"WHY hain't it, I'd like to know?" says Hank.
+"I knowed a man oncet whose name was Farmer,
+and if a farmer's a name why ain't a company a
+name too?"
+
+"His name is Daniel Dunne," says Elmira, quiet-
+like, but not dodging a row, neither.
+
+"AND COMPANY," says Hank, getting onto his
+feet, like he always done when he seen trouble
+coming.  When Old Hank was full of licker he
+knowed jest the ways to aggervate her the worst.
+
+She might of banged him one the same as usual,
+and got her own eye blacked also, the same as
+usual; but jest then I lets out another big yowl,
+and she give me some milk.
+
+I guess the only reason they ever kep' me at
+first was so they could quarrel about my name.
+They'd lived together a good many years and
+quarrelled about everything else under the sun, and
+was running out of subjects.  A new subject kind
+o' briskened things up fur a while.
+
+But finally they went too far with it one time.
+I was about two years old then and he was still
+calling me Company and her calling me Dunne.
+This time he hits her a lick that lays her out and
+likes to kill her, and it gets him scared.  But she
+gets around agin after a while, and they both see
+it has went too fur that time, and so they makes up.
+
+"Elmira, I give in," says Hank.  "His name is
+Dunne."
+
+"No," says she, tender-like, "you was right,
+Hank.  His name is Company."  So they pretty
+near got into another row over that.  But they
+finally made it up between  em I didn't have no
+last name, and they'd jest call me Danny.  Which
+they both done faithful ever after, as agreed.
+
+Old Hank, he was a blacksmith, and he used to
+lamm me considerable, him and his wife not having
+any kids of their own to lick.  He lammed me when
+he was drunk, and he whaled me when he was sober.
+I never helt it up agin him much, neither, not fur
+a good many years, because he got me used to it
+young, and I hadn't never knowed nothing else.
+Hank's wife, Elmira, she used to lick him jest about
+as often as he licked her, and boss him jest as much.
+So he fell back on me.  A man has jest naturally
+got to have something to cuss around and boss,
+so's to keep himself from finding out he don't
+amount to nothing.  Leastways, most men is like
+that.  And Hank, he didn't amount to much; and
+he kind o' knowed it, way down deep in his inmost
+gizzards, and it were a comfort to him to have me
+around.
+
+But they was one thing he never sot no store by,
+and I got along now to where I hold that up agin
+him more'n all the lickings he ever done.  That
+was book learning.  He never had none himself,
+and he was sot agin it, and he never made me get
+none, and if I'd ever asted him for any he'd of
+whaled me fur that.  Hank's wife, Elmira, had
+married beneath her, and everybody in our town
+had come to see it, and used to sympathize with
+her about it when Hank wasn't around.  She'd
+tell  em, yes, it was so.  Back in Elmira, New
+York, from which her father and mother come to
+our part of Illinoise in the early days, her father
+had kep' a hotel, and they was stylish kind o'
+folks.  When she was born her mother was homesick
+fur all that style and fur York State ways, and so
+she named her Elmira.
+
+But when she married Hank, he had considerable
+land.  His father had left it to him, but it was all
+swamp land, and so Hank's father, he hunted
+more'n he farmed, and Hank and his brothers
+done the same when he was a boy.  But Hank,
+he learnt a little blacksmithing when he was growing
+up,  cause he liked to tinker around and to show how
+stout he was.  Then, when he married Elmira
+Appleton, he had to go to work practising that
+perfession reg'lar, because he never learnt nothing
+about farming.  He'd sell fifteen or twenty acres,
+every now and then, and they'd be high times till
+he'd spent it up, and mebby Elmira would get
+some new clothes.
+
+But when I was found on the door step, the land
+was all gone, and Hank was practising reg'lar,
+when not busy cussing out the fellers that had bought
+the land.  Fur some smart fellers had come along,
+and bought up all that swamp land and dreened
+it, and now it was worth seventy or eighty dollars
+an acre.  Hank, he figgered some one had cheated
+him.  Which the Walterses could of dreened theirn
+too, only they'd ruther hunt ducks and have fish
+frys than to dig ditches.  All of which I hearn
+Elmira talking over with the neighbours more'n
+once when I was growing up, and they all says:
+"How sad it is you have came to this, Elmira!"
+And then she'd kind o' spunk up and say, thanks to
+glory, she'd kep' her pride.
+
+Well, they was worse places to live in than that
+there little town, even if they wasn't no railroad
+within eight miles, and only three hundred soles
+in the hull copperation.  Which Hank's shop and
+our house set in the edge of the woods jest outside
+the copperation line, so's the city marshal didn't
+have no authority to arrest him after he
+crossed it.
+
+They was one thing in that house I always
+admired when I was a kid.  And that was a big
+cistern.  Most people has their cisterns outside
+their house, and they is a tin pipe takes all the rain
+water off the roof and scoots it into them.  Ourn
+worked the same, but our cistern was right in under
+our kitchen floor, and they was a trap door with
+leather hinges opened into it right by the kitchen
+stove.  But that wasn't why I was so proud of it.
+It was because that cistern was jest plumb full of
+fish -- bullheads and red horse and sunfish and
+other kinds.
+
+Hank's father had built that cistern.  And one
+time he brung home some live fish in a bucket and
+dumped  em in there.  And they growed.  And
+they multiplied in there and refurnished the earth.
+So that cistern had got to be a fambly custom, which
+was kep' up in that fambly for a habit.  It was a
+great comfort to Hank, fur all them Walterses was
+great fish eaters, though it never went to brains.
+We fed  em now and then, and throwed back in the
+little ones till they was growed, and kep' the dead
+ones picked out soon's we smelled anything wrong,
+and it never hurt the water none; and when I was
+a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living in a
+house like that.
+
+Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old,
+Hank come home from the bar-room.  He got to
+chasing Elmira's cat  cause he says it was making
+faces at him.  The cistern door was open, and Hank
+fell in.  Elmira was over to town, and I was scared.
+She had always told me not to fool around there
+none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there
+I'd be a corpse quicker'n scatt.
+
+So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash,
+being only a little feller, and awful scared because
+Elmira had always made it so strong, I hadn't no
+sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already.
+So I slams the trap door shut over that there cistern
+without looking in, fur I hearn Hank flopping around
+down in there.  I hadn't never hearn a corpse flop
+before, and didn't know but what it might be some-
+how injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no
+chances.
+
+So I went out and played in the front yard, and
+waited fur Elmira.  But I couldn't seem to get my
+mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor nothing.
+I kep' thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to
+come flopping out of that cistern and whale me
+some unusual way.  I hadn't never been licked by
+a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is,
+anyhow, being young and comparitive innocent.
+So I sneaks back in and sets all the flatirons in the
+house on top of the cistern lid.  I hearn some flop-
+ping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's
+corpse is trying to jump up and is falling back into
+the water, and I hearn Hank's voice, and got
+scareder yet.  And when Elmira come along down
+the road, she seen me by the gate a-crying, and she
+asts me why.
+
+"Hank is a corpse," says I, blubbering.
+
+"A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping her coffee
+which she was carrying home from the gineral
+store and post-office.  "Danny, what do you
+mean?"
+
+I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then
+I hadn't said nothing about Hank being a corpse.
+And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing
+more.  So when she grabs holt of me and asts me
+agin what did I mean I blubbered harder, jest the
+way a kid will, and says nothing else.  I wisht I
+hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come
+to me all at oncet that even if Hank HAS turned
+into a corpse I ain't got any right to keep him in
+that cistern.
+
+Jest then Old Mis' Rogers, which is one of our
+neighbours, comes by, while Elmira is shaking
+me and yelling out what did I mean and how did
+it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's
+corpse?
+
+And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been
+doing now, Elmira?" me being always up to some-
+thing.
+
+Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she
+gives a whoop and then hollers out: "Hank is
+dead!" and throws her apern over her head and
+sets right down in the path and boo-hoos like a
+baby.  And I bellers louder.
+
+Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing
+more.  She seen she had a piece of news, and she's
+bound to be the first to spread it, like they is always
+a lot of women wants to be in them country towns.
+She run right acrost the road to where the Alexan-
+derses lived.  Mis' Alexander, she seen her coming
+and unhooked the screen door, and Mis'
+Rogers she hollers out before she reached the
+porch:
+
+"Hank Walters is dead."
+
+And then she went footing it up the street.
+They was a black plume on her bunnet which nodded
+the same as on a hearse, and she was into and out
+of seven front yards in five minutes.
+
+Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to
+where we was, and she kneels down and puts her
+arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back
+and forth in the path, and she says:
+
+"How do you know he's dead, Elmira?  I seen
+him not more'n an hour ago."
+
+"Danny seen it all," says Elmira.
+
+Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know
+what happened and how it happened and where
+it happened.  But I don't want to say nothing
+about that cistern.  So I busts out bellering fresher'n
+ever, and I says:
+
+"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and
+he done it then, and that's how he cone it," I says.
+
+"And you seen him?" she says.  I nodded.
+
+"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to
+oncet.
+
+But I was scared to say nothing about that there
+cistern, so I jest bawled some more.
+
+"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis'
+Alexander.  I nodded my head agin and let it go
+at that.
+
+"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander.  I
+nodded agin.  I hadn't meant to give out no untrue
+stories.  But a kid will always tell a lie, not meaning
+to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions
+like that, and get him scared the way you're acting.
+Besides, I says to myself, "so long as Hank has
+turned into a corpse and that makes him dead,
+what's the difference whether he's in the black-
+smith shop or not?"  Fur I hadn't had any plain idea,
+being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead,
+and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither,
+except they had funerals over you then.  I knowed
+being a corpse must be some sort of a big disad-
+vantage from the way Elmira always says keep
+away from that cistern door or I'll be one.  But
+if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd
+feel kind o' important, too.  They didn't have  em
+every day in our town, and we hadn't never had
+one of our own.
+
+So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house,
+both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort
+her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto
+Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them.  And in a
+few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told
+come filing into that room, one at a time, looking
+sad.  Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late
+getting there because she stopped to put on her
+bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black
+Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent
+her from Chicago.
+
+When they found out Hank had come home with
+licker in him and done it himself, they was all
+excited, and they all crowds around and asts me
+how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands
+which sets moaning in a chair.  And they all asts
+me questions as to what I seen him do, which if
+they hadn't I wouldn't have told  em the lies I did.
+But they egged me on to it.
+
+Says one woman: "Danny, you seen him do it
+in the blacksmith shop?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"But how did he get in?" sings out another
+woman.  "The door was locked on the outside with
+a padlock jest now when I come by.  He couldn't
+of killed himself in there and locked the door on
+the outside."
+
+I didn't see how he could of done that myself,
+so I begun to bawl agin and said nothing at all.
+
+"He must of crawled through that little side
+window," says another one.  "It was open when I
+come by, if the door WAS locked.  Did you see him
+crawl through the little side window, Danny?"
+
+I nodded.  They wasn't nothing else fur me to
+do.
+
+"But YOU hain't tall enough to look through that
+there window," says another one to me.  "How
+could you see into that shop, Danny?"
+
+I didn't know, so I didn't say nothing at all; I
+jest sniffled.
+
+"They is a store box right in under that window,"
+says another one.  "Danny must have clumb onto
+that store box and looked in after he seen Hank
+come down the road and crawl through the window.
+Did you scramble onto the store box and look in,
+Danny?"
+
+I jest nodded agin.
+
+"And what was it you seen him do?  How did
+he kill himself?" they all asts to oncet.
+
+_I_ didn't know.  So I jest bellers and boo-hoos
+some more.  Things was getting past anything I
+could see the way out of.
+
+"He might of hung himself to one of the iron
+rings in the jists above the forge," says another
+woman.  "He clumb onto the forge to tie the rope
+to one of them rings, and he tied the other end
+around his neck, and then he stepped off'n the forge.
+Was that how he done it, Danny?"
+
+I nodded.  And then I bellered louder than ever.
+I knowed Hank was down in that there cistern, a
+corpse and a mighty wet corpse, all this time; but
+they kind o' got me to thinking mebby he was hang-
+ing out in the shop by the forge, too.  And I guessed
+
+I'd better stick to the shop story, not wanting to
+say nothing about that cistern no sooner'n I could
+help it.
+
+Pretty soon one woman says, kind o' shivery:
+
+"I don't want to have the job of opening the door
+of that blacksmith shop the first one!"
+
+And they all kind o' shivered then, and looked at
+Elmira.  They says to let some of the men open
+it.  And Mis' Alexander, she says she'll run home
+and tell her husband right off.
+
+And all the time Elmira is moaning in that chair.
+One woman says Elmira orter have a cup o' tea,
+which she'll lay off her bunnet and go to the kitchen
+and make it fur her.  But Elmira says no, she can't
+a-bear to think of tea, with poor Hennerey a-hang-
+ing out there in the shop.  But she was kind o'
+enjoying all that fuss being made over her, too.
+And all the other women says:
+
+"Poor thing!"  But all the same they was mad
+she said she didn't want any tea, for they all wanted
+some and didn't feel free without she took it too.
+Which she said she would after they'd coaxed a
+while and made her see her duty.
+
+So they all goes out to the kitchen, bringing along
+some of the best room chairs, Elmira coming too,
+and me tagging along behind.  And the first thing
+they noticed was them flatirons on top of the cistern
+door.  Mis' Primrose, she says that looks funny.
+But another woman speaks up and says Danny must
+of been playing with them while Elmira was over
+town.  She says, "Was you playing they was
+horses, Danny?"
+
+I was feeling considerable like a liar by this time,
+but I says I was playing horses with them, fur I
+couldn't see no use in hurrying things up.  I was
+bound to get a lamming purty soon anyhow.  When
+I was a kid I could always bet on that.  So they
+picks up the flatirons, and as they picks  em up they
+come a splashing noise in the cistern.  I thinks to
+myself, Hank's corpse'll be out of there in a minute.
+One woman, she says:
+
+"Goodness gracious sakes alive!  What's that,
+Elmira?"
+
+Elmira says that cistern is mighty full of fish,
+and they is some great big ones in there, and it must
+be some of them a-flopping around.  Which if
+they hadn't of been all worked up and talking
+all to oncet and all thinking of Hank's body hanging
+out there in the blacksmith shop they might of
+suspicioned something.  For that flopping kep' up
+steady, and a lot of splashing too.  I mebby orter
+mentioned sooner it had been a dry summer and
+they was only three or four feet of water in our
+cistern, and Hank wasn't in scarcely up to his big
+hairy chest.  So when Elmira says the cistern
+is full of fish, that woman opens the trap door and
+looks in.  Hank thinks it's Elmira come to get him
+out.  He allows he'll keep quiet in there and make
+believe he is drowned and give her a good scare
+and make her sorry fur him.  But when the cistern
+door is opened, he hears a lot of clacking tongues
+all of a sudden like they was a hen convention on.
+He allows she has told some of the neighbours,
+and he'll scare them too.  So Hank, he laid low.
+And the woman as looks in sees nothing, for it's
+as dark down there as the insides of the whale
+what swallered Noah.  But she leaves the door
+open and goes on a-making tea, and they ain't
+skeercly a sound from that cistern, only little,
+ripply noises like it might have been fish.
+
+Pretty soon a woman says:
+
+"It has drawed, Elmira; won't you have a cup?"
+Elmira she kicked some more, but she took hern.
+And each woman took hern.  And one woman,
+a-sipping of hern, she says:
+
+"The departed had his good pints, Elmira."
+
+Which was the best thing had been said of Hank
+in that town fur years and years.
+
+Old Mis' Primrose, she always prided herself
+on being honest, no matter what come, and she ups
+and says:
+
+"I don't believe in no hippercritics at a time like
+this, no more'n no other time.  The departed
+wasn't no good, and the hull town knowed it; and
+Elmira orter feel like it's good riddance of bad
+rubbish and them is my sentiments and the senti-
+ments of rightfulness."
+
+All the other women sings out:
+
+"W'y, MIS' PRIMROSE! I never!"  And they
+seemed awful shocked.  But down in underneath
+more of  em agreed than let on.  Elmira she wiped
+her eyes and she said:
+
+"Hennerey and me has had our troubles.  They
+ain't any use in denying that, Mis' Primrose.  It
+has often been give and take between us and betwixt
+us.  And the hull town knows he has lifted his hand
+agin me more'n oncet.  But I always stood up to
+Hennerey, and I fit him back, free and fair and open.
+I give him as good as he sent on this here earth,
+and I ain't the one to carry no annermosities be-
+yond the grave.  I forgive Hank all the orneriness
+he done me, and they was a lot of it, as is becoming
+unto a church member, which he never was."
+
+And all the women but Mis' Primrose, they says:
+
+"Elmira Appleton, you HAVE got a Christian
+sperrit!"  Which done her a heap of good, and she
+cried considerable harder, leaking out tears as fast
+as she poured tea in.  Each one on  em tries to
+find out something good to say about Hank, only
+they wasn't much they could say.  And Hank in
+that there cistern a-listening to every word of it.
+
+Mis' Rogers, she says:
+
+"Afore he took to drinking like a fish, Hank
+Walters was as likely looking a young feller as I
+ever see."
+
+Mis' White, she says:
+
+"Well, Hank he never was a stingy man, nohow.
+Often and often White has told me about seeing
+Hank, after he'd sold a piece of land, treating the
+hull town down in Nolan's bar-room jest as come-
+easy, go-easy as if it wasn't money he orter paid
+his honest debts with."
+
+They set there that-a-way telling of what good
+pints they could think of fur ten minutes, and Hank
+a-hearing it and getting madder and madder all the
+time.  The gineral opinion was that Hank wasn't
+no good and was better done fur, and no matter
+what they said them feelings kep' sticking out
+through the words.
+
+By and by Tom Alexander come busting into the
+house, and his wife, Mis' Alexander, was with him.
+
+"What's the matter with all you folks," he says.
+"They ain't nobody hanging in that there black-
+smith shop.  I broke the door down and went in,
+and it was empty."
+
+Then they was a pretty howdy-do, and they all
+sings out:
+
+"Where's the corpse?"
+
+And some thinks mebby some one has cut it down
+and took it away, and all gabbles to oncet.  But
+for a minute no one thinks mebby little Danny has
+been egged on to tell lies.  Little Danny ain't
+saying a word.  But Elmira she grabs me and shakes
+me and she says:
+
+"You little liar, you, what do you mean by that
+tale you told?"
+
+I thinks that lamming is about due now.  But
+whilst all eyes is turned on me and Elmira, they
+comes a voice from that cistern.  It is Hank's
+voice, and he sings out:
+
+"Tom Alexander, is that you?"
+
+Some of the women scream, for some thinks it
+is Hank's ghost.  But one woman says what would
+a ghost be doing in a cistern?
+
+Tom Alexander, he laughs and he says:
+
+"What in blazes you want to jump in there fur,
+Hank?"
+
+"You dern ijut!" says Hank, "you quit mocking
+me and get a ladder, and when I get out'n here I'll
+learn you to ast what did I want to jump in here
+fur!"
+
+"You never seen the day you could do it," says
+Tom Alexander, meaning the day he could lick
+him.  "And if you feel that way about it you can
+stay there fur all of me.  I guess a little water
+won't hurt you none."  And he left the house.
+
+"Elmira," sings out Hank, mad and bossy, "you
+go get me a ladder!"
+
+But Elmira, her temper riz up too, all of
+a sudden.
+
+"Don't you dare order me around like I was the
+dirt under your feet, Hennerey Walters," she says.
+
+At that Hank fairly roared, he was so mad.  He
+says:
+
+"Elmira, when I get out'n here I'll give you what
+you won't fergit in a hurry.  I hearn you a-forgiving
+me and a-weeping over me, and I won't be forgive
+nor weeped over by no one!  You go and get that
+ladder."
+
+But Elmira only answers:
+
+"You wasn't sober when you fell into there,
+Hennerey Walters.  And now you can jest stay in
+there till you get a better temper on you!"  And all
+the women says: "That's right, Elmira; spunk
+up to him!"
+
+They was considerable splashing around in the
+water fur a couple of minutes.  And then, all of a
+sudden, a live fish come a-whirling out of that hole,
+which he had ketched it with his hands.  It was
+a big bullhead, and its whiskers around its mouth
+was stiffened into spikes, and it lands kerplump into
+Mis' Rogers's lap, a-wiggling, and it kind o' horns
+her on the hands, and she is that surprised she faints.
+Mis' Primrose, she gets up and pushes that fish
+back into the cistern with her foot from the floor
+where it had fell, and she says right decided:
+
+"Elmira Walters, that was Elmira Appleton,
+if you let Hank out'n that cistern before he has
+signed the pledge and promised to jine the church
+you're a bigger fool 'n I take you to be.  A woman
+has got to make a stand!"  With that she marches
+out'n our house.
+
+Then all the women sings out:
+
+"Send fur Brother Cartwright!  Send fur Brother
+Cartwright!"
+
+And they sent me scooting acrost town to get him
+quick.  Which he was the preacher of the Baptist
+church and lived next to it.  And I hadn't got no
+lamming yet!
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+I never stopped to tell but two, three folks
+on the way to Brother Cartwright's, but
+they must of spread it quick.  'Cause when
+I got back home with him it seemed like the hull
+town was there.  It was along about dusk by this
+time, and it was a prayer-meeting night at the
+church.  Mr. Cartwright told his wife to tell the
+folks what come to the prayer-meeting he'd be
+back before long, and to wait fur him.  Which she
+really told them where he had went, and what fur.
+Mr. Cartwright marches right into the kitchen.
+All the chairs in our house was into the kitchen,
+and the women was a-talking and a-laughing, and
+they had sent over to Alexanderses for their chairs
+and to Rogerses for theirn.  Every oncet in a while
+they would be a awful bust of language come up
+from that hole where that unreginerate old sinner
+was cooped up in.
+
+I have travelled around considerable since them
+days, and I have mixed up along of many kinds
+of people in many different places, and some of 'em
+was cussers to admire.  But I never hearn such
+cussing before or since as old Hank done that night.
+He busted his own records and riz higher'n his own
+water marks for previous times.  I wasn't nothing
+but a little kid then, and skeercly fitten fur to ad-
+mire the full beauty of it.  They was deep down
+cusses, that come from the heart.  Looking back
+at it after all these years, I can believe what Brother
+Cartwright said himself that night, that it wasn't
+natcheral cussing and some higher power, like a
+demon or a evil sperrit, must of entered into Hank's
+human carkis and give that turrible eloquence to
+his remarks.  It busted out every few minutes,
+and the women would put their fingers into their
+ears till a spell was over.  And it was personal, too.
+Hank, he would listen until he hearn a woman's
+voice that he knowed, and then he would let loose
+on her fambly, going backwards to her grandfathers
+and downwards to her children's children.  If her
+father had once stolen a hog, or her husband done
+any disgrace that got found out on him, Hank would
+put it all into his gineral remarks, with trimmings
+onto it.
+
+Brother Cartwright, he steps up to the hole in
+the floor when he first comes in and he says, gentle-
+like and soothing, like a undertaker when he tells
+you where to set at a home funeral:
+
+"Brother Walters."
+
+"Brother!" Hank yells out, "don't ye brother
+me, you sniffling, psalm-singing, yaller-faced,
+pigeon-toed hippercrit, you!  Get me a ladder,
+gol dern you, and I'll come out'n here and learn
+you to brother me, I will."  Only that wasn't
+nothing to what Hank really said to that preacher;
+no more like it than a little yaller, fluffy canary is
+like a buzzard.
+
+"Brother Walters," says the preacher, ca'am but
+firm, "we have all decided that you ain't going to
+come out of that cistern till you sign the pledge."
+
+And Hank tells him what he thinks of pledges and
+him and church doings, and it wasn't purty.  And
+he says if he was as deep in eternal fire as what he
+now is in rain-water, and every fish that nibbles
+at his toes was a preacher with a red-hot pitchfork
+a-jabbing at him, they could jab till the hull here-
+after turned into snow afore he'd ever sign nothing a
+man like Mr. Cartwright give him to sign.  Hank
+was stubborner than any mule he ever nailed shoes
+onto, and proud of being that stubborn.  That
+town was a awful religious town, and Hank he
+knowed he was called the most onreligious man in it,
+and he was proud of that too; and if any one called
+him a heathen it jest plumb tickled him all over.
+
+"Brother Walters," says that preacher, "we are
+going to pray for you."
+
+And they done it.  They brought all them chairs
+close up around that cistern, in a ring, and they
+all kneeled down there, with their heads on 'em,
+and they prayed fur Hank's salvation.  They done
+it up in style, too, one at a time, and the others
+singing out, "Amen!" every now and then, and they
+shed tears down onto Hank.  The front yard was
+crowded with men, all a-laughing and a-talking
+and chawing and spitting tobacco and betting how
+long Hank would hold out.  Old Si Emery, that
+was the city marshal, and always wore a big nickel-
+plated star, was out there with 'em.  Si was in a
+sweat, 'cause Bill Nolan, that run the bar-room,
+and some more of Hank's friends, or as near friends
+as he had, was out in the road.  They says to Si
+he must arrest that preacher, fur Hank is being
+gradual murdered in that there water, and he'll
+die if he's helt there too long, and it will be a crime.
+Only they didn't come into the yard to say it
+amongst us religious folks.  But Si, he says he
+dassent arrest no one because it is outside the town
+copperation; but he's considerable worried too
+about what his duty orter be.
+
+Pretty soon the gang that Mrs. Cartwright has
+rounded up at the prayer-meeting comes stringing
+along in.  They had all brung their hymn books
+with them, and they sung.  The hull town was
+there then, and they all sung, and they sung re-
+vival hymns over Hank.  And Hank he would jest
+cuss and cuss.  Every time he busted out into
+another cussing spell they would start another
+hymn.  Finally the men out in the front yard got
+warmed up too, and begun to sing, all but Bill
+Nolan's crowd, and they give Hank up for lost and
+went away disgusted.
+
+The first thing you knowed they was a reg'lar
+revival meeting there, and that preacher was
+preaching a reg'lar revival sermon.  I been to
+more'n one camp meeting, but fur jest natcherally
+taking holt of the hull human race by the slack
+of its pants and dangling of it over hell-fire, I never
+hearn nothing could come up to that there sermon.
+Two or three old backsliders in the crowd come right
+up and repented all over agin on the spot.  The
+hull kit and biling of 'em got the power good and
+hard, like they does at camp meetings and revivals.
+But Hank, he only cussed.  He was obstinate,
+Hank was, and his pride and dander had riz up.
+Finally he says:
+
+"You're taking a ornery, low-down advantage
+o' me, you are.  Let me out'n this here cistern and
+I'll show you who'll stick it out longest on dry
+land, dern your religious hides!"
+
+Some of the folks there hadn't had no suppers,
+so after all the other sinners but Hank had either
+got converted or else sneaked away, some of the
+women says why not make a kind of love feast out
+of it, and bring some vittles, like they does to
+church sociables.  Because it seems likely Satan
+is going to wrastle all night long, like he done with
+the angel Jacob, and they ought to be prepared.
+So they done it.  They went and they come back
+with vittles and they made up hot coffee and they
+feasted that preacher and theirselves and Elmira
+and me, all right in Hank's hearing.
+
+And Hank was getting hungry himself.  And he
+was cold in that water.  And the fish was nibbling
+at him.  And he was getting cussed out and weak
+and soaked full of despair.  And they wasn't no
+way fur him to set down and rest.  And he was
+scared of getting a cramp in his legs, and sinking
+down with his head under water and being drownded.
+He said afterward he'd of done the last with pleasure
+if they was any way of suing that crowd fur murder.
+So along about ten o'clock he sings out:
+
+"I give in, gosh dern ye!  I give in.  Let me
+out and I'll sign your pesky pledge!"
+
+Brother Cartwright was fur getting a ladder and
+letting him climb out right away.  But Elmira, she
+says:
+
+"Don't you do it, Brother Cartwright; don't
+you do it.  You don't know Hank Walters like I
+does.  If he oncet gets out o' there before he's
+signed that pledge, he won't never sign it."
+
+So they fixed it up that Brother Cartwright was
+to write out a pledge on the inside leaf of the Bible,
+and tie the Bible onto a string, and a lead pencil
+onto another string, and let the strings down to
+Hank, and he was to make his mark, fur he couldn't
+write, and they was to be pulled up agin.  Hank,
+he says all right, and they done it.  But jest as
+Hank was making his mark on the leaf of the book,
+that preacher done what I has always thought was
+a mean trick.  He was lying on the floor with his
+head and shoulders into that hole as fur as he could,
+holding a lantern way down into it, so as Hank could
+see.  And jest as Hank made that mark he spoke
+some words over him, and then he says:
+
+"Now, Henry Walters, I have baptized you, and
+you are a member of the church."
+
+You'd a thought Hank would of broke out cussing
+agin at being took unexpected that-a-way, fur he
+hadn't really agreed to nothing but signing the
+pledge.  But nary a cuss.  He jest says: "Now,
+you get that ladder."
+
+They got it, and he clumb up into the kitchen,
+dripping and shivering.
+
+"You went and baptized me in that water?"
+he asts the preacher.  The preacher says he has.
+
+"Then," says Hank, "you done a low-down trick
+on me.  You knowed I has made my brags I never
+jined no church nor never would jine.  You knowed
+I was proud of that.  You knowed that it was my
+glory to tell of it, and that I set a heap of store by
+it in every way.  And now you've went and took
+it away from me!  You never fought it out fair
+and square, neither, man playing to outlast man,
+like you done with this here pledge, but you sneaked
+it in on me when I wasn't looking."
+
+They was a lot of men in that crowd that thought
+the preacher had went too far, and sympathized
+with Hank.  The way he done about that hurt
+Brother Cartwright in our town, and they was a
+split in the church, because some said it wasn't
+reg'lar and wasn't binding.  He lost his job after
+a while and become an evangelist.  Which it don't
+make no difference what one of them does, nohow.
+
+But Hank, he always thought he had been bap-
+tized reg'lar.  And he never was the same after-
+ward.  He had made his life-long brags, and his
+pride was broke in that there one pertic'ler spot.
+And he sorrered and grieved over it a good 'eal,
+and got grouchier and grouchier and meaner and
+meaner, and lickered oftener, if anything.  Signing
+the pledge couldn't hold Hank.  He was worse in
+every way after that night in the cistern, and took
+to lamming me harder and harder.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Well, all the lammings Hank laid on never
+done me any good.  It seemed like I was
+jest natcherally cut out to have no success
+in life, and no amount of whaling could change
+it, though Hank, he was faithful.  Before I was
+twelve years old the hull town had seen it, and they
+wasn't nothing else expected of me except not to
+be any good.
+
+That had its handy sides to it, too.  They was
+lots of kids there that had to go to school, but Hank,
+he never would of let me done that if I had ast
+him, and I never asted.  And they was lots of
+kids considerably bothered all the time with their
+parents and relations.  They made 'em go to
+Sunday School, and wash up reg'lar all over on
+Saturday nights, and put on shoes and stockings
+part of the time, even in the summer, and some of
+'em had to ast to go in swimming, and the hull thing
+was a continuous trouble and privation to 'em.
+But they wasn't nothing perdicted of me, and I
+done like it was perdicted.  Everybody 'lowed
+from the start that Hank would of made trash
+out'n me, even if I hadn't showed all the signs of
+being trash anyhow.  And if they was devilment
+anywhere about that town they all says, "Danny,
+he done it."  And like as not I has.  So I gets to
+be what you might call an outcast.  All the kids
+whose folks ain't trash, their mothers tells 'em not
+to run with me no more.  Which they done it all
+the more fur that reason, on the sly, and it makes
+me more important with them.
+
+But when I gets a little bigger, all that makes me
+feel kind o' bad sometimes.  It ain't so handy
+then.  Fur folks gets to saying, when I would come
+around:
+
+"Danny, what do YOU want?"
+
+And if I says, "Nothing," they would say:
+
+"Well, then, you get out o' here!"
+
+Which they needn't of been suspicioning nothing
+like they pertended they did, fur I never stole
+nothing more'n worter millions and mush millions
+and such truck, and mebby now and then a chicken
+us kids use to roast in the woods on Sundays, and
+jest as like as not it was one of Hank's hens then,
+which I figgered I'd earnt it.
+
+Fur Hank, he had streaks when he'd work me
+considerable hard.  He never give me any money
+fur it.  He loafed a lot too, and when he'd loaf
+I'd loaf.  But I did pick up right smart of handiness
+with tools around that there shop of his'n, and if
+he'd ever of used me right I might of turned into a
+purty fair blacksmith.  But it wasn't no use trying
+to work fur Hank.  When I was about fifteen,
+times is right bad around the house fur a spell,
+and Elmira is working purty hard, and I thinks to
+myself:
+
+"Well, these folks has kind o' brung you up, and
+you ain't never done more'n Hank made you
+do.  Mebby you orter stick to work a little more
+when they's a job in the shop, even if Hank
+don't."
+
+Which I tried it fur about two or three years,
+doing as much work around the shop as Hank done
+and mebby more.  But it wasn't no use.  One
+day when I'm about eighteen, I seen awful plain
+I'll have to light out from there.  They was a
+circus come to town that day.  I says to Hank:
+
+"Hank, they is a circus this afternoon and agin
+to-night."
+
+"So I has hearn," says Hank.
+
+"Are you going to it?" says I.
+
+"I mout," says Hank, "and then agin I moutn't.
+I don't see as it's no consarns of yourn, nohow."
+I knowed he was going, though.  Hank, he never
+missed a circus.
+
+"Well," I says, "they wasn't no harm to ast,
+was they?"
+
+"Well, you've asted, ain't you?" says Hank.
+
+"Well, then," says I, "I'd like to go to that there
+circus myself."
+
+"They ain't no use in me saying fur you not to
+go," says Hank, "fur you would go anyhow.  You
+always does go off when you is needed."
+
+"But I ain't got no money," I says, "and I was
+going to ast you could you spare me half a dollar?"
+
+"Great Jehosephat!" says Hank, "but ain't
+you getting stuck up!  What's the matter of you
+crawling in under the tent like you always done?
+First thing I know you'll be wanting a pair of these
+here yaller shoes and a stove-pipe hat."
+
+"No," says I, "I ain't no dude, Hank, and you
+know it.  But they is always things about a circus
+to spend money on besides jest the circus herself.
+They is the side show, fur instance, and they is the
+grand concert afterward.  I calkelated I'd take
+'em all in this year--the hull dern thing, jest fur
+oncet."
+
+Hank, he looks at me like I'd asted fur a house 'n'
+lot, or a million dollars, or something like that.  But
+he don't say nothing.  He jest snorts.
+
+"Hank," I says, "I been doing right smart work
+around the shop fur two, three years now.  If
+you wasn't loafing so much you'd a noticed it more.
+And I ain't never ast fur a cent of pay fur it,
+nor--"
+
+"You ain't wuth no pay," says Hank.  "You
+ain't wuth nothing but to eat vittles and wear out
+clothes."
+
+"Well," I says, "I figger I earn my vittles and a
+good 'eal more.  And as fur as clothes goes, I never
+had none but what Elmira made out'n yourn."
+
+"Who brung you up?" asts Hank.
+
+"You done it," says I, "and by your own say-so
+you done a dern poor job at it."
+
+"You go to that there circus," says Hank, a-flaring
+up, "and I'll lambaste you up to a inch of your life.
+So fur as handing out money fur you to sling it to
+the dogs, I ain't no bank, and if I was I ain't no
+ijut.  But you jest let me hear of you even going
+nigh that circus lot and all the lammings you has
+ever got, rolled into one, won't be a measly little
+sarcumstance to what you WILL get.  They ain't
+no leather-faced young upstart with weepin'-willow
+hail going to throw up to me how I brung him up.
+That's gratitood fur you, that is!" says Hank.  "If
+it hadn't of been fur me giving you a home when I
+found you first, where would you of been now?"
+
+"Well," I says, "I might of been a good 'eal
+better off.  If you hadn't of took me in the Alexan-
+derses would of, and then I wouldn't of been kep' out
+of school and growed up a ignoramus like you is."
+
+"I never had no trouble keeping you away from
+school, I notice," says Hank, with a snort.  "This
+is the first I ever hearn of you wanting to go there."
+
+Which was true in one way, and a lie in another.
+I hadn't never wanted to go till lately, but he'd
+of lammed me if I had of wanted to.  He always
+said he would.  And now I was too big and
+knowed it.
+
+Well, Hank, he never give me no money, so I
+watches my chancet that afternoon and slips in
+under the tent the same as always.  And I lays
+low under them green benches and wiggled through
+when I seen a good chancet.  The first person I
+seen was Hank.  Of course he seen me, and he
+shook his fist at me in a promising kind of way,
+and they wasn't no trouble figgering out what he
+meant.  Fur a while I didn't enjoy that circus to
+no extent.  Fur I was thinking that if Hank tries
+to lick me fur it I'll fight him back this time, which
+I hadn't never fit him back much yet fur fear
+he'd pick up something iron around the shop and
+jest natcherally lay me cold with it.
+
+I got home before Hank did.  It was nigh sun-
+down, and I was waiting in the door of the shop fur
+Elmira to holler vittles is ready, and Hank come
+along.  He didn't waste no time.  He steps inside
+the shop and he takes down a strap and he
+says:
+
+"You come here and take off your shirt."
+
+But I jest moves away.  Hank, he runs in on me,
+and he swings his strap.  I throwed up my arm,
+and it cut me acrost the knuckles.  I run in on him,
+and he dropped the strap and fetched me an open-
+handed smack plumb on the mouth that jarred my
+head back and like to of busted it loose.  Then I
+got right mad, and I run in on him agin, and this
+time I got to him, and wrastled with him.
+
+Well, sir, I never was so surprised in all my life
+before.  Fur I hadn't had holt on him more'n
+a minute before I seen I'm stronger than Hank is.
+I throwed him, and he hit the ground with con-
+siderable of a jar, and then I put my knee in the
+pit of his stomach and churned it a couple.  And
+I thinks to myself what a fool I must of been fur
+better'n a year, because I might of done this any
+time.  I got him by the ears and I slammed his
+head into the gravel a few times, him a-reaching
+fur my throat, and a-pounding me with his fists,
+but me a-taking the licks and keeping holt.  And
+I had a mighty contented time fur a few minutes
+there on top of Hank, chuckling to myself, and
+batting him one every now and then fur luck, and
+trying to make him holler it's enough.  But Hank
+is stubborn and he won't holler.  And purty soon
+I thinks, what am I going to do?  Fur Hank will
+be so mad when I let him up he'll jest natcherally
+kill me, without I kill him.  And I was scared,
+because I don't want neither one of them things to
+happen.  Whilst I was thinking it over, and getting
+scareder and scareder, and banging Hank's head
+harder and harder, some one grabs me from behind.
+
+They was two of them, and one gets my collar
+and one gets the seat of my pants, and they drug
+me off'n him.  Hank, he gets up, and then he sets
+down sudden on a horse block and wipes his face
+on his sleeve, which they was considerable blood
+come onto the sleeve.
+
+I looks around to see who has had holt of me, and
+it is two men.  One of them looks about seven feet
+tall, on account of a big plug hat and a long white
+linen duster, and has a beautiful red beard.  In the
+road they is a big stout road wagon, with a canopy
+top over it, pulled by two hosses, and on the wagon
+box they is a strip of canvas.  Which I couldn't
+read then what was wrote on the canvas, but I
+learnt later it said, in big print:
+
+SIWASH INDIAN SAGRAW.
+NATURE'S UNIVERSAL MEDICINAL SPECIFIC.
+DISCOVERED BY DR. HARTLEY L. KIRBY
+AMONG THE ABORIGINES OF OREGON.
+
+
+On account of being so busy, neither Hank nor
+me had hearn the wagon come along the road and
+stop.  The big man in the plug hat, he says, or
+they was words to that effect, jest as serious:
+
+"Why are you mauling the aged gent?"
+
+"Well," says I, "he needed it considerable."
+
+"But," says he, still more solemn, "the good book
+says to honour thy father and thy mother."
+
+"Well," I says, "mebby it does and mebby it
+don't.  But HE ain't my father, nohow.  And he
+ain't been getting no more'n his come-uppings."
+
+"Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord," the big
+man remarks, very serious.  Hank, he riz up then,
+and he says:
+
+"Mister, be you a preacher?  'Cause if you be,
+the sooner you have druv on, the better fur ye.
+I got a grudge agin all preachers."
+
+That feller, he jest looks Hank over ca'am and
+easy and slow before he answers, and he wrinkles
+up his face like he never seen anything like Hank
+before.  Then he fetches a kind o' aggervating smile,
+and he says:
+
+
+"Beneath a shady chestnut tree
+  The village blacksmith stands.
+The smith, a pleasant soul is he
+  With warts upon his hands--"
+
+
+
+He stares at Hank hard and solemn and serious
+while he is saying that poetry at him.  Hank
+fidgets and turns his eyes away.  But the feller
+touches him on the breast with his finger, and makes
+him look at him.
+
+"My honest friend," says the feller, "I am NOT
+a preacher.  Not right now, anyhow.  No!  My
+mission is spreading the glad tidings of good health.
+Look at me," and he swells his chest up, and keeps
+a-holt of Hank's eyes with his'n.  "You behold
+before you the discoverer, manufacturer, and
+proprietor of Siwash Indian Sagraw, nature's own
+remedy for Bright's Disease, rheumatism, liver and
+kidney trouble, catarrh, consumption, bronchitis,
+ring-worm, erysipelas, lung fever, typhoid, croup,
+dandruff, stomach trouble, dyspepsia--"  And
+they was a lot more of 'em.
+
+"Well," says Hank, sort o' backing up as the big
+man come nearer and nearer to him, jest natcherally
+bully-ragging him with them eyes, "I got none of
+them there complaints."
+
+The doctor he kind o' snarls, and he brings his
+hand down hard on Hank's shoulder, and he
+says:
+
+"There are more things betwixt Dan and Beer-
+sheba than was ever dreamt of in thy sagacity,
+Romeo!"  Or they was words to that effect, fur
+that doctor was jest plumb full of Scripter quota-
+tions.  And he sings out sudden, giving Hank a
+shove that nearly pushes him over: "Man alive!"
+he yells, "you DON'T KNOW what disease you may have!
+Many's the strong man I've seen rejoicing in his
+strength at the dawn of day cut down like the grass
+in the field before sunset," he says.
+
+Hank, he's trying to look the other way, but that
+doctor won't let his eyes wiggle away from his'n.
+He says very sharp:
+
+"Stick out your tongue!"
+
+Hank, he sticks her out.
+
+The doctor, he takes some glasses out'n his pocket
+and puts 'em on, and he fetches a long look at her.
+Then he opens his mouth like he was going to say
+something, and shuts it agin like his feelings won't
+let him.  He puts his arm across Hank's shoulder
+affectionate and sad, and then he turns his head
+away like they was some one dead in the fambly.
+Finally, he says:
+
+"I thought so.  I saw it.  I saw it in your eyes
+when I first drove up.  I hope," he says, very
+mournful, "I haven't come too late!"
+
+Hank, he turns pale.  I was getting sorry fur
+Hank myself.  I seen now why I licked him so
+easy.  Any one could of told from that doctor's
+actions Hank was as good as a dead man already.
+But Hank, he makes a big effort, and he
+says:
+
+"Shucks!  I'm sixty-eight years old, doctor, and
+I hain't never had a sick day in my life."  But
+he was awful uneasy too.
+
+The doctor, he says to the feller with him:
+"Looey, bring me one of the sample size."
+
+Looey brung it, the doctor never taking his eyes
+off'n Hank.  He handed it to Hank, and he says:
+
+"A whiskey glass full three times a day, my
+friend, and there is a good chance for even you.
+I give it to you, without money and without price."
+
+"But what have I got?" asts Hank.
+
+"You have spinal meningitis," says the doctor,
+never batting an eye.
+
+"Will this here cure me?" says Hank.
+
+"It'll cure ANYTHING," says the doctor.
+
+Hank he says, "Shucks," agin, but he took the
+bottle and pulled the cork out and smelt it, right
+thoughtful.  And what them fellers had stopped
+at our place fur was to have the shoe of the nigh
+hoss's off hind foot nailed on, which it was most
+ready to drop off.  Hank, he done it fur a regula-
+tion, dollar-size bottle and they druv on into the
+village.
+
+Right after supper I goes down town.  They
+was in front of Smith's Palace Hotel.  They was
+jest starting up when I got there.  Well, sir, that
+doctor was a sight.  He didn't have his duster
+onto him, but his stove-pipe hat was, and one of
+them long Prince Alferd coats nearly to his knees,
+and shiny shoes, but his vest was cut out holler fur
+to show his biled shirt, and it was the pinkest shirt
+I ever see, and in the middle of that they was a dia-
+mond as big as Uncle Pat Hickey's wen, what was
+one of the town sights.  No, sir; they never was a
+man with more genuine fashionableness sticking
+out all over him than Doctor Kirby.  He jest
+fairly wallered in it.
+
+I hadn't paid no pertic'ler attention to the other
+feller with him when they stopped at our place,
+excepting to notice he was kind of slim and black-
+haired and funny complected.  But I seen now I
+orter of looked closeter.  Fur I'll be dad-binged
+if he weren't an Injun!  There he set, under that
+there gasoline lamp the wagon was all lit up with,
+with moccasins on, and beads and shells all over
+him, and the gaudiest turkey tail of feathers rain-
+bowing down from his head you ever see, and a
+blanket around him that was gaudier than the
+feathers.  And he shined and rattled every time
+he moved.
+
+That wagon was a hull opry house to itself.  It
+was rolled out in front of Smith's Palace Hotel
+without the hosses.  The front part was filled with
+bottles of medicine.  The doctor, he begun business
+by taking out a long brass horn and tooting on it.
+They was about a dozen come, but they was mostly
+boys.  Then him and the Injun picked up some
+banjoes and sung a comic song out loud and clear.
+And they was another dozen or so come.  And
+they sung another song, and Pop Wilkins, he closed
+up the post-office and come over and the other
+two veterans of the Grand Army of the Republicans
+that always plays checkers in there nights come
+along with him.  But it wasn't much of a crowd,
+and the doctor he looked sort o' worried.  I had
+a good place, right near the hind wheel of the wagon
+where he rested his foot occasional, and I seen what
+he was thinking.  So I says to him:
+
+"Doctor Kirby, I guess the crowd is all gone to
+the circus agin to-night."  And all them fellers
+there seen I knowed him.
+
+"I guess so, Rube," he says to me.  And they
+all laughed 'cause he called me Rube, and I felt
+kind of took down.
+
+Then he lit in to tell about that Injun medicine.
+First off he told how he come to find out about
+it.  It was the father of the Injun what was with
+him had showed him, he said.  And it was in the
+days of his youthfulness, when he was wild, and a
+cowboy on the plains of Oregon.  Well, one night
+he says, they was an awful fight on the plains of
+Oregon, wherever them is, and he got plugged full
+of bullet holes.  And his hoss run away with him
+and he was carried off, and the hoss was going at a
+dead run, and the blood was running down onto
+the ground.  And the wolves smelt the blood and
+took out after him, yipping and yowling something
+frightful to hear, and the hoss he kicked out be-
+hind and killed the head wolf and the others stopped
+to eat him up, and while they was eating him the
+hoss gained a quarter of a mile.  But they et him
+up and they was gaining agin, fur the smell of human
+blood was on the plains of Oregon, he says, and the
+sight of his mother's face when she ast him never
+to be a cowboy come to him in the moonlight,
+and he knowed that somehow all would yet be well,
+and then he must of fainted and he knowed no more
+till he woke up in a tent on the plains of Oregon.
+And they was an old Injun bending over him and
+a beautiful Injun maiden was feeling of his pulse,
+and they says to him:
+
+"Pale face, take hope, fur we will doctor you with
+Siwash Injun Sagraw, which is nature's own cure
+fur all diseases."
+
+They done it.  And he got well.  It had been a
+secret among them there Injuns fur thousands and
+thousands of years.  Any Injun that give away the
+secret was killed and rubbed off the rolls of the
+tribe and buried in disgrace upon the plains of
+Oregon.  And the doctor was made a blood brother
+of the chief, and learnt the secret of that medicine.
+Finally he got the chief to see as it wasn't Christian
+to hold back that there medicine from the world
+no longer, and the chief, his heart was softened,
+and he says to go.
+
+"Go, my brother," he says, "and give to the pale
+faces the medicine that has been kept secret fur
+thousands and thousands of years among the Siwash
+Injuns on the plains of Oregon."
+
+And he went.  It wasn't that he wanted to make
+no money out of that there medicine.  He could
+of made all the money he wanted being a doctor
+in the reg'lar way.  But what he wanted was to
+spread the glad tidings of good health all over this
+fair land of ourn, he says.
+
+Well, sir, he was a talker, that there doctor was,
+and he knowed more religious sayings and poetry
+along with it, than any feller I ever hearn.  He
+goes on and he tells how awful sick people can
+manage to get and never know it, and no one else
+never suspicion it, and live along fur years and years
+that-a-way, and all the time in danger of death.
+He says it makes him weep when he sees them poor
+diluted fools going around and thinking they is
+well men, talking and laughing and marrying and
+giving in to marriage right on the edge of the grave.
+He sees dozens of 'em in every town he comes to.
+But they can't fool him, he says.  He can tell at a
+glance who's got Bright's Disease in their kidneys
+and who ain't.  His own father, he says, was deathly
+sick fur years and years and never knowed it, and
+the knowledge come on him sudden like, and he
+died.  That was before Siwash Injun Sagraw was
+ever found out about.  Doctor Kirby broke down
+and cried right there in the wagon when he thought
+of how his father might of been saved if he was
+only alive now that that medicine was put up into
+bottle form, six fur a five-dollar bill so long as he was
+in town, and after that two dollars fur each bottle
+at the drug store.
+
+He unrolled a big chart and the Injun helt it
+by that there gasoline lamp, so all could see, turning
+the pages now and then.  It was a map of a man's
+inside organs and digestive ornaments and things.
+They was red and blue, like each organ's own
+disease had turned it, and some of 'em was yaller.
+And they was a long string of diseases printed in
+black hanging down from each organ's picture.  I
+never knowed before they was so many diseases
+nor yet so many things to have 'em in.
+
+Well, I was feeling purty good when that show
+started.  But the doc, he kep' looking right at me
+every now and then when he talked, and I couldn't
+keep my eyes off'n him.
+
+"Does your heart beat fast when you exercise?"
+he asts the crowd.  "Is your tongue coated after
+meals?  Do your eyes leak when your nose is stopped
+up?  Do you perspire under your arm pits?  Do you
+ever have a ringing in your ears?  Does your
+stomach hurt you after meals?  Does your back
+ever ache?  Do you ever have pains in your legs?
+Do your eyes blur when you look at the sun?  Are
+your teeth coated?  Does your hair come out when
+you comb it?  Is your breath short when you walk
+up stairs?  Do your feet swell in warm weather?
+Are there white spots on your finger nails?  Do
+you draw your breath part of the time through one
+nostril and part of the time through the other?
+Do you ever have nightmare?  Did your nose
+bleed easily when you were growing up?  Does
+your skin fester when scratched?  Are your eyes
+gummy in the mornings?  Then," he says, "if
+you have any or all of these symptoms, your blood
+is bad, and your liver is wasting away."
+
+Well, sir, I seen I was in a bad way, fur at one
+time or another I had had most of them there signs
+and warnings, and hadn't heeded 'em, and I had
+some of 'em yet.  I begun to feel kind o' sick, and
+looking at them organs and diseases didn't help
+me none, either.  The doctor, he lit out on another
+string of symptoms, and I had them, too.  Seems
+to me I had purty nigh everything but fits.  Kidney
+complaint and consumption both had a holt on me.
+It was about a even bet which would get me first.
+I kind o' got to wondering which.  I figgered from
+what he said that I'd had consumption the LONGEST
+while, but my kind of kidney trouble was an awful
+SLY kind, and it was lible to jump in without no
+warning a-tall and jest natcherally wipe me out
+QUICK.  So I sort o' bet on the kidney trouble.
+But I seen I was a goner, and I forgive Hank all
+his orneriness, fur a feller don't want to die holding
+grudges.
+
+Taking it the hull way through, that was about
+the best medicine show I ever seen.  But they
+didn't sell much.  All the people what had any
+money was to the circus agin that night.  So they
+sung some more songs and closed early and went into
+the hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Well, the next morning I'm feeling con-
+siderable better, and think mebby I'm go-
+ing to live after all.  I got up earlier'n
+Hank did, and slipped out without him seeing me, and
+didn't go nigh the shop a-tall.  Fur now I've licked
+Hank oncet I figger he won't rest till he has wiped
+that disgrace out, and he won't care a dern what
+he picks up to do it with, nuther.
+
+They was a crick about a hundred yards from our
+house, in the woods, and I went over there and laid
+down and watched it run by.  I laid awful still,
+thinking I wisht I was away from that town.  Purty
+soon a squirrel comes down and sets on a log and
+watches me.  I throwed an acorn at him, and he
+scooted up a tree quicker'n scatt.  And then I
+wisht I hadn't scared him away, fur it looked like
+he knowed I was in trouble.  Purty soon I takes a
+swim, and comes out and lays there some more,
+spitting into the water and thinking what shall
+I do now, and watching birds and things mov-
+ing around, and ants working harder'n ever I
+would agin unless I got better pray fur it, and these
+here tumble bugs kicking their loads along hind
+end to.
+
+After a while it is getting along toward noon, and
+I'm feeling hungry.  But I don't want to have no
+more trouble with Hank, and I jest lays there.  I
+hearn two men coming through the underbrush.
+I riz up on my elbow to look, and one of them was
+Doctor Kirby and the other was Looey, only Looey
+wasn't an Injun this morning.
+
+They sets down on the roots of a big tree a little
+ways off, with their backs toward me, and they
+ain't seen me.  So nacherally I listened to what
+they was jawing about.  They was both kind o'
+mad at the hull world, and at our town in pertic'ler,
+and some at each other, too.  The doctor, he says:
+
+"I haven't had such rotten luck since I played
+the bloodhound in a Tom Show--Were you ever
+an 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' artist, Looey?--and a
+justice of the peace over in Iowa fined me five
+dollars for being on the street without a muzzle.
+Said it was a city ordinance.  Talk about the
+gentle Rube being an easy mark!  If these country
+towns don't get the wandering minstrel's money
+one way they will another!"
+
+"It's your own fault," says Looey, kind o' sour.
+
+"I can't see it," says Doctor Kirby.  "How did
+I know that all these apple-knockers had been filled
+up with Sykes's Magic Remedy only two weeks
+ago?  I may have been a spiritualistic medium in
+my time now and then," he says, "and a mind
+reader, too, but I'm no prophet."
+
+"I ain't talking about the business, Doc, and you
+know it," says Looey.  "We'd be all right and have
+our horses and wagon now if you'd only stuck to
+business and not got us into that poker game.
+Talk about suckers!  Doc, for a man that has
+skinned as many of 'em as you have, you're the
+worst sucker yourself I ever saw."
+
+The doctor, he cusses the poker game and country
+towns and medicine shows and the hull creation
+and says he is so disgusted with life he guesses he'll
+go and be a preacher or a bearded lady in a side-
+show.  But Looey, he don't cheer up none.  He says:
+
+"All right, Doc, but it's no use talking.  You
+can TALK all right.  We all know that.  The ques-
+tion is how are we going to get our horses and wagon
+away from these Rubes?"
+
+I listens some more, and I seen them fellers was
+really into bad trouble.  Doctor Kirby, he had got
+into a poker game at Smith's Palace Hotel the night
+before, right after the show.  He had won from
+Jake Smith, which run it, and from the others.
+But shucks! it never made no difference what you
+won in that crowd.  They had done Doctor Kirby
+and Looey like they always done a drummer or a
+stranger that come along to that town and was
+fool enough to play poker with them.  They wasn't
+a chancet fur an outsider.  If the drummer lost,
+they would take his money and that would be all
+they was to it.  But if the drummer got to winning
+good, some one would slip out'n the hotel and tell
+Si Emery, which was the city marshal.  And Si
+would get Ralph Scott, that worked fur Jake Smith
+in his livery stable, and pin a star onto Ralph, too.
+And they would be arrested fur gambling, only them
+that lived in our town would get away.  Which Si
+and Ralph was always scared every time they done
+it.  Then the drummer, or whoever it was, would
+be took to the calaboose, and spend all night
+there.
+
+In the morning they would be took before Squire
+Matthews, that was justice of the peace.  They
+would be fined a big fine, and he would get all the
+drummer had won and all he had brung to town with
+him besides.  Squire Matthews and Jake Smith
+and Windy Goodell and Mart Watson, which the
+two last was lawyers, was always playing that there
+game on drummers that was fool enough to play
+poker.  Hank, he says he bet they divided it up
+afterward, though it was supposed them fines went
+to the town.  Well, they played a purty closte
+game of poker in our little town.  It was jest like
+the doctor says to Looey:
+
+"By George," he says, "it is a well-nigh perfect
+thing.  If you lose you lose, and if you win you
+lose."
+
+Well, the doctor, he had started out winning the
+night before.  And Si Emery and Ralph Scott had
+arrested them.  And that morning, while I had
+been laying by the crick and the rest of the town was
+seeing the fun, they had been took afore Squire
+Matthews and fined one hundred and twenty-five
+dollars apiece.  The doctor, he tells Squire Mat-
+thews it is an outrage, and it ain't legal if tried
+in a bigger court, and they ain't that much money
+in the world so fur as he knows, and he won't pay
+it.  But, the squire, he says the time has come to
+teach them travelling fakirs as is always running
+around the country with shows and electric belts
+and things that they got to stop dreening that
+town of hard-earned money, and he has decided
+to make an example of 'em.  The only two
+lawyers in town is Windy and Mart, which has
+been in the poker game theirselves, the same as
+always.  The doctor says the hull thing is a put-up
+job, and he can't get the money, and he wouldn't
+if he could, and he'll lay in that town calaboose and
+rot the rest of his life and eat the town poor before
+he'll stand it.  And the squire says he'll jest take
+their hosses and wagon fur c'latteral till they make
+up the rest of the two hundred and fifty dollars.
+And the hosses and wagon was now in the livery
+stable next to Smith's Palace Hotel, which Jake run
+that too.
+
+Well, I thinks to myself, it IS a dern shame, and
+I felt sorry fur them two fellers.  Fur our town was
+jest as good as stealing that property.  And I
+felt kind o' shamed of belonging to such a town, too.
+And I thinks to myself, I'd like to help 'em out of
+that scrape.  And then I seen how I could do it,
+and not get took up fur it, neither.  So, without
+thinking, all of a sudden I jumps up and says:
+
+"Say, Doctor Kirby, I got a scheme!"
+
+They jumps up too, and they looks at me startled.
+Then the doctor kind o' laughs and says:
+
+"Why, it's the young blacksmith!"
+
+Looey, he says, looking at me hard and suspicious:
+
+"What kind of a scheme are you talking about?"
+
+"Why," says I, "to get that outfit of yourn."
+
+"You've been listening to us," says Looey.
+Looey was one of them quiet-looking fellers that
+never laughed much nor talked much.  Looey,
+he never made fun of nobody, which the doctor was
+always doing, and I wouldn't of cared to make fun
+of Looey much, either.
+
+"Yes," I says, "I been laying here fur quite a
+spell, and quite natcheral I listened to you, as any
+one else would of done.  And mebby I can get that
+team and wagon of yourn without it costing you
+a cent."
+
+Well, they didn't know what to say.  They asts
+me how, but I says to leave it all to me.  "Walk
+right along down this here crick," I says, "till you
+get to where it comes out'n the woods and runs
+acrost the road in under an iron bridge.  That's
+about a half a mile east.  Jest after the road crosses
+the bridge it forks.  Take the right fork and walk
+another half a mile and you'll see a little yaller-
+painted schoolhouse setting lonesome on a sand
+hill.  They ain't no school in it now.  You wait
+there fur me," I says, "fur a couple of hours.  After
+that if I ain't there you'll know I can't make it.
+But I think I'll make it."
+
+They looks at each other and they looks at me,
+and then they go off a little piece and talk low, and
+then the doctor says to me:
+
+"Rube," he says, "I don't know how you can
+work anything on us that hasn't been worked
+already.  We've got nothing more we can lose.
+You go to it, Rube."  And they started off.
+
+So I went over town.  Jake Smith was setting
+on the piazza in front of his hotel, chawing and
+spitting tobacco, with his feet agin the railing like
+he always done, and one of his eyes squinched up
+and his hat over the other one.
+
+"Jake," I says, "where's that there doctor?"
+
+Jake, he spit careful afore he answered, and he
+pulled his long, scraggly moustache careful, and he
+squinched his eyes at me.  Jake was a careful man
+in everything he done.
+
+"I dunno, Danny," he says.  "Why?"
+
+"Well," I says, "Hank sent me over to get that
+wagon and them hosses of theirn and finish that
+job."
+
+"That there wagon," says Jake, "is in my barn,
+with Si Emery watching her, and she has got to
+stay there till the law lets her loose."  I figgered
+to myself Jake could use that team and wagon in
+his business, and was going to buy her cheap offn
+the town, what share of her he didn't figger he owned
+already.
+
+"Why, Jake," I says, "I hope they ain't been no
+trouble of no kind that has drug the law into your
+barn!"
+
+"Well, Danny," he says, "they HAS been a little
+trouble.  But it's about over, now, I guess.  And
+that there outfit belongs to the town now."
+
+"You don't say so!" says I, surprised-like.
+"When I seen them men last night it looked to me
+like they was too fine dressed to be honest."
+
+"I don't think they be, Danny," says Jake,
+confidential.  "In my opinion they is mighty bad
+customers.  But they has got on the wrong side
+of the law now, and I guess they won't stay around
+here much longer."
+
+"Well," says I, "Hank will be glad."
+
+"Fur what?" asts Jake.
+
+"Well," says I, "because he got his pay in advance
+fur that job and now he don't have to finish it.
+They come along to our place about sundown
+yesterday, and we nailed a shoe on one hoss.  They
+was a couple of other hoofs needed fixing, and the
+tire on one of the hind wheels was beginning to
+rattle loose."
+
+I had noticed that loose tire when I was standing
+by the hind wheel the night before, and it come in
+handy now.  So I goes on:
+
+"Hank, he allowed he'd fix the hull thing fur
+six bottles of that Injun medicine.  Elmira has been
+ailing lately, and he wanted it fur her.  So they
+handed Hank out six bottles then and there."
+
+"Huh!" says Jake.  "So the job is all paid
+fur, is it?"
+
+"Yes," says I, "and I was expecting to do it
+myself.  But now I guess I'll go fishing instead.
+They ain't no other job in the shop."
+
+"I'll be dinged if you've got time to fish," says
+Jake.  "I'm expecting mebby to buy that rig off
+the town myself when the law lets loose of it.  So
+if the fixing is paid fur, I want everything fixed."
+
+"Jake," says I, kind of worried like, "I don't
+want to do it without that doctor says to go ahead."
+
+"They ain't his'n no longer," says Jake.
+
+"I dunno," says I, "as you got any right to make
+me do it, Jake.  It don't look to me like it's no
+harm to beat a couple of fellers like them out of
+their medicine.  And I DID want to go fishing this
+afternoon."
+
+But Jake was that careful and stingy he'd try
+to skin a hoss twicet if it died.  He's bound to
+get that job done, now.
+
+"Danny," he says, "you gotto do that work.
+It ain't HONEST not to.  What a young feller like
+you jest starting out into life wants to remember
+is to always be honest.  Then," says Jake, squinch-
+ing up his eyes, "people trusts you and you get a
+good chancet to make money.  Look at this here
+hotel and livery stable, Danny.  Twenty years
+ago I didn't have no more'n you've got, Danny.
+But I always went by them mottoes--hard work
+and being honest.  You GOTTO nail them shoes on,
+Danny, and fix that wheel."
+
+"Well, all right, Jake," says I, "if you feel that
+way about it.  Jest give me a chaw of tobacco and
+come around and help me hitch 'em up."
+
+Si Emery was there asleep on a pile of straw
+guarding that property.  But Ralph Scott wasn't
+around.  Si didn't wake up till we had hitched 'em
+up.  He says he will ride around to the shop with
+me.  But Jake says:
+
+"It's all right, Si.  I'll go over myself and fetch
+'em back purty soon."  Which Si was wore out
+with being up so late the night before, and goes
+back to sleep agin right off.
+
+Well, sir, they wasn't nothing went wrong.  I
+drove slow through the village and past our shop.
+Hank come to the door of it as I went past.  But
+I hit them hosses a lick, and they broke into a right
+smart trot.  Elmira, she come onto the porch and
+I waved my hand at her.  She put her hand up to
+her forehead to shut out the sun and jest stared.
+She didn't know I was waving her farewell.  Hank,
+he yelled something at me, but I never hearn what.
+I licked them hosses into a gallop and went around
+the turn of the road.  And that's the last I ever
+seen or hearn of Hank or Elmira or that there little
+town.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+I slowed down when I got to the school-
+house, and both them fellers piled in.
+
+"I guess I better turn north fur about
+a mile and then turn west, Doctor Kirby," I says,
+"so as to make a kind of a circle around that town."
+
+"Why, so, Rube?" he asts me.
+
+"Well," I says, "we left it going east, and they'll
+foller us east; so don't we want to be going west
+while they're follering east?"
+
+Looey, he agreed with me.  But he said it
+wouldn't be much use, fur we would likely be
+ketched up with and took back and hung or some-
+thing, anyhow.  Looey could get the lowest in his
+sperrits sometimes of any man I ever seen.
+
+"Don't be afraid of that," says the doctor.
+"They are not going to follow us.  THEY know they
+didn't get this property by due process of law.
+THEY aren't going to take the case into a county
+court where it will all come out about the way they
+robbed a couple of travelling men with a fake
+trial."
+
+"I guess you know more about the law'n I do,"
+I says.  "I kind o' thought mebby we stole them
+hosses."
+
+"Well," he says, "we got 'em, anyhow.  And
+if they try to arrest us without a warrant there'll
+be the deuce to pay.  But they aren't going to
+make any more trouble.  I know these country
+crooks.  They've got no stomach for trouble out-
+side their own township."
+
+Which made me feel considerable better, fur I
+never been of the opinion that going agin the law
+done any one no good.
+
+They looks around in that wagon, and all their
+stuff was there--Jake Smith and the squire hav-
+ing kep' it all together careful to make things seem
+more legal, I suppose--and the doctor was plumb
+tickled, and Looey felt as cheerful as he ever felt
+about anything.  So the doctor says they has every-
+thing they needs but some ready money, and he'll
+get that sure, fur he never seen the time he couldn't.
+
+"But, Looey," he says, "I'm done with country
+hotels from now on.  They've got the last cent
+they ever will from me--at least in the summer
+time."
+
+"How you going to work it?" Looey asts him,
+like he hasn't no hopes it will work right.
+
+"Camp out," says the doctor.  "I've been think-
+ing it all over."  Then he turns to me.  "Rube,"
+he says, "where are you going?"
+
+"Well," I says, "I ain't pinted nowhere in per-
+tic'ler except away from that town we just left.
+Which my name ain't Rube, Doctor Kirby, but
+Danny."
+
+"Danny what?" asts he.
+
+"Nothing," says I, "jest Danny."
+
+"Well, then, Danny," says he, "how would you
+like to be an Indian?"
+
+"Medical?" asts I, "or real?"
+
+"Like Looey," says he.
+
+I tells him being a medical Injun and mixed up
+with a show like his'n would suit me down to the
+ground, and asts him what is the main duties of
+one besides the blankets and the feathers.
+
+"Well," he says, "this camping-out scheme of
+mine will take a couple of Indians.  Instead of pay-
+ing hotel and feed bills we'll pitch our tent," he
+says, "at the edge of town in each sweet Auburn of
+the plains.  We'll save money and we'll be near the
+throbbing heart of nature.  And an Indian camp
+in each place will be a good advertisement for the
+Sagraw.  You can look after the horses and learn
+to do the cooking and that kind o' thing.  And
+maybe after while," he says, kind o' working him-
+self up to where he thought it was going to be real
+nice, "maybe after while I will give you some in-
+sight into the hidden mysteries of selling Siwash
+Indian Sagraw."
+
+"Well," says I, "I'd like to learn that."
+
+"Would you?" says he, kind o' laughing at him-
+self and me too, and yet kind o' enthusiastic, "well,
+then, the first thing you have to do is learn how to
+sell corn salve.  Any one that can sell corn salve
+can sell anything.  There's a farmhouse right over
+there, and I'll give you your first lesson right now.
+Rummage around in that satchel there under the
+seat and get me a tin box and some corn salve
+labels."
+
+I found a lot of labels, and some boxes too.  The
+labels was all different sizes, but barring that they
+all looked about the same to me.  Whilst I was
+sizing them up he asts me agin was they any corn
+salve ones in there.
+
+"What colour label is it, Doctor Kirby?" I
+asts him.  Fur they was blue labels and white labels
+and pink labels.
+
+He looks at me right queer.  "Can't you read
+the labels?" he says, right sharp.
+
+"Well," I says, "I never been much of a reader
+when it comes to different kind of medicines."
+
+"Corn salve is spelled only one way," says he.
+
+"That's right," I says, "and you'd think I orter
+be able to pick out a common, ordinary thing like
+corn salve right off, wouldn't you?"
+
+"Danny," he says, "you don't mean to tell me
+you can't read anything at all?"
+
+"I never told you nothing of the kind."
+
+He picks out a label.
+
+"If you can read so fast, what's that?" he asts.
+
+She is a pink one.  I thinks to myself; she either
+is corn salve or else she ain't corn salve.  And it
+ain't natcheral he will pick corn salve, fur he would
+think I would say that first off.  So I'm betting it
+ain't.  I takes a chancet on it.
+
+"That," says I, "is mighty easy reading.  That is
+Siwash Injun Sagraw."  I lost.
+
+"It's corn salve," he says.  "And Great Scott!
+They call this the twentieth century!"
+
+"I never called it that," says I, sort o' mad-like.
+Fur I was feeling bad Doctor Kirby had found out
+I was such a ignoramus.
+
+"Where ignorance is bliss," says he, "it is folly
+to be wise.  But all the same, I'm going to take
+your education in hand and make you drink of
+life's Peruvian springs."  Or some spring like that it
+was.
+
+And the doctor, he done it.  Looey said it
+wouldn't be no use learning to read.  He'd done a
+lot of reading, he said, and it never helped him none.
+All he ever read showed him this feller Hamlet was
+right, he said, when he wrote Shakespeare's works,
+and they wasn't much use in anything, without you
+had a lot o' money.  And they wasn't no chancet
+to get that with all these here trusts around gobbling
+up everything and stomping the poor man into the
+dirt, and they was lots of times he wisht he was a
+Injun sure enough, and not jest a medical one, fur
+then he'd be a free man and the bosses and the
+trusts and the railroads and the robber tariff
+couldn't touch him.  And then he shut up, and
+didn't say nothing fur a hull hour, except oncet he
+laughed.
+
+Fur Doctor Kirby, he says, winking at me:
+"Looey, here, is a nihilist."
+
+"Is he," says I, what's that?"  And the doctor
+tells me about how they blow up dukes and czars
+and them foreign high-mucky-mucks with dynamite.
+Which is when Looey laughed.
+
+Well, we jogged along at a pretty good gait fur
+several hours, and we stayed that night at a Swede's
+place, which the doctor paid him fur everything in
+medicine, only it took a long time to make the bar-
+gain, fur them Swedes is always careful not to
+get cheated, and hasn't many diseases.  And the
+next night we showed in a little town, and done
+right well, and took in considerable money.  We
+stayed there three days and bought a tent and a
+sheet-iron stove and some skillets and things and
+some provisions, and a suit of duds for me.
+
+Well, we went on, and we kept going on, and they
+was bully times.  We'd ease up careful toward a
+town, and pick us out a place on the edge, where
+the hosses could graze along the side of the road;
+and most ginerally by a piece of woods not fur from
+that town, and nigh a crick, if we could.  Then
+we'd set up our tent.  After we had everything
+fixed, I'd put on my Injun clothes and Looey his'n,
+and we'd drive through the main store street of
+the town at a purty good lick, me a-holt of the
+reins, and the doctor all togged out in his best clothes,
+and Looey doing a Injun dance in the midst of the
+wagon.  I'd pull up the hosses sudden in front of
+the post-office or the depot platform or the hotel,
+and the people would come crowding around, and
+the doctor he'd make a little talk from the wagon,
+and tell everybody they would be a free show that
+night on that corner, and fur everybody to come to
+it.  And then we'd drive back to camp, lickity-
+split.
+
+Purty soon every boy in town would be out there,
+kind o' hanging around, to see what a Injun camp
+was like.  And the farmers that went into and out
+of town always stopped and passed the time of
+day, and the Injun camp got the hull town all
+worked up as a usual thing; and the doctor, he
+done well, fur when night come every one would
+be on hand.  Looey and me, every time we went
+into town, had on our Injun suits, and the doctor,
+he wondered why he hadn't never thought up that
+scheme before.  Sometimes, when they was lots
+of people ailing in a town, and they hadn't been
+no show fur quite a while, we'd stay five or six
+days, and make a good clean-up.  The doctor,
+he sent to Chicago several times fur alcohol in
+barrels, 'cause he was selling it so fast he had to
+make new Sagraw.  And he had to get more and
+more bottles, and a hull satchel full of new Sagraw
+labels printed.
+
+And all the time the doctor was learning me edu-
+cation.  And shucks! they wasn't nothing so hard
+about it oncet you'd got started in to reading things.
+I jest natcherally took to print like a duck to water,
+and inside of a month I was reading nigh every-
+thing that has ever been wrote.  He had lots of
+books with him and every time a new sockdologer
+of a word come along and I learnt how to spell
+her and where she orter fit in to make sense it kind
+o' tickled me all over.  And many's the time
+afterward, when me and the doctor had lost track
+of each other, and they was quite a spell people
+got to thinking I was a tramp, I've went into these
+here Andrew Carnegie libraries in different towns
+jest as much to see if they had anything fitten to
+read as fur to keep warm.
+
+Well, we went easing over toward the Indiany
+line, and we was having a purty good time.  They
+wasn't no work to do you could call really hard,
+and they was plenty of vittles.  Afternoons we'd
+lazy around the camp and swap stories and make
+medicine if we needed a batch, and josh back and
+forth with the people that hung around, and loaf and
+doze and smoke; or mebby do a little fishing if we
+was nigh a crick.
+
+And nights after the show was over it was fun,
+too.  We always had a fire, even if it was a hot
+night, fur to cook by in the first place, and fur to
+keep mosquitoes off, and to make things seem more
+cheerful.  They ain't nothing so good as hanging
+round a campfire.  And they ain't nothing any
+better than sleeping outdoors, neither.  You roll
+up in your blanket with your feet to the fire and you
+get to wondering things about things afore you go
+to sleep.  The silentness jest natcherally swamps
+everything after a while, and then all them queer
+little noises you never hear in the daytime comes
+popping and poking through the silentness, or kind
+o' scratching their way through it sometimes, and
+makes it kind o' feel more silent than ever.  And
+if you are nigh a crick, purty soon it will sort of
+get to talking to you, only you can't make out what
+it's trying to say, and you get to wondering about
+that, too.  And if you are in a tent and it rains
+and the tent don't leak, that rain is a kind of a
+nice thing to listen to itself.  But if you can see
+the stars you get to wondering more'n ever.  They
+come out and they is so many of them and they
+are so fur away, and yet they are so kind o' friendly-
+like, too, if you happen to be feeling purty good.
+But if you ain't feeling purty good, jest lay there and
+look at them stars long enough; and then mebby
+you'll see it don't make no difference whether
+you're feeling good or not, fur they got a way o'
+making your private troubles look mighty small.
+And you get to wondering why that is, too, fur they
+ain't human; and it don't stand to reason you orter
+pay no attention to them, one way nor the other.
+They is jest there, like trees and cricks and hills.
+But I have often noticed that the things that is
+jest there has got a way of seeming more friendly
+than the things that has been built and put there.
+You can look at a big iron bridge or a grain elevator
+or a canal all day long, and if you're feeling blue it
+don't help you none.  It was jest put there.  Or
+a hay stack is the same way.  But you go and lazy
+around in the grass when you're down on your luck
+and kind o' make remarks to a crick or a big, old
+walnut tree, and before long it gets you to feeling
+like it didn't make no difference how you felt,
+anyhow; fur you don't amount to nothing by the
+side of something that was always there.  You
+get to thinking how the hull world itself was always
+here, and you sort o' see they ain't nothing im-
+portant enough about yourself to worry about,
+and presently you will go to sleep and forget
+it.  The doctor says to me one time them stars
+ain't any different from this world, and this is
+one of them.  Which is a fool idea, as any one
+can see.  He had a lot of queer ideas like that,
+Doctor Kirby had.  But they ain't nothing like
+sleeping out of doors nights to make you wonder
+the kind of wonderings you never will get any
+answer to.
+
+Well, I never cared so much fur houses after them
+days.  They was bully times, them was.  And I
+was kind of proud of being with a show, too.
+Many's the time I have went down the street in
+that there Injun suit, and seen how the young
+fellers would of give all they owned to be me.  And
+every now and then you would hear one say when
+you went past:
+
+"Huh, I know him!  That's one of them show
+fellers!"
+
+One afternoon we pitches our tent right on the
+edge of a little town called Athens.  We was nigh
+the bank of a crick, and they was a grove there.
+We was camped jest outside of a wood-lot fence,
+and back in through the trees from us they was a
+house with a hedge fence all around it.  They was
+apple trees and all kind of flower bushes and things
+inside of the hedge.  The second day we was there
+I takes a walk back through the wood-lot, and
+along past the house, and they was one of these
+here early harvest apple trees spilling apples through
+a gap in the fence.  Them is a mighty sweet and
+juicy kind of apple, and I picks one up and bites
+into it.
+
+"I think you might have asked for it," says
+some one.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+I looks up, and that was how I got ac-
+quainted with Martha.  She was eating
+one herself, setting up in the tree like a boy.
+In her lap was a book she had been reading.  She
+was leaning back into the fork two limbs made so
+as not to tumble.
+
+"Well," I says, "can I have one?"
+
+"You've eaten it already," she says, "so there
+isn't any use begging for it now."
+
+I seen she was a tease, that girl, and I would of
+give anything to of been able to tease her right
+back agin.  But I couldn't think of nothing to
+say, so I jest stands there kind o' dumb like, thinking
+what a dern purty girl she was, and thinking how
+dumb I must look, and I felt my face getting red.
+Doctor Kirby would of thought of something to say
+right off.  And after I got back to camp I would
+think of something myself.  But I couldn't think
+of nothing bright, so I says:
+
+"Well, then, you give me another one!"
+
+She gives the core of the one she has been eating
+a toss at me.  But I ketched it, and made like I
+was going to throw it back at her real hard.  She
+slung up her arm, and dodged back, and she dropped
+her book.
+
+I thinks to myself I'll learn that girl to get sassy
+and make me feel like a dumb-head, even if she is
+purty.  So I don't say a word.  I jest picks up
+that book and sticks it under my arm and walks
+away slow with it to where they was a stump a
+little ways off, not fur from the crick, and sets down
+with my back to her and opens it.  And I was
+trying all the time to think of something smart to
+say to her.  But I couldn't of done it if I was to
+be shot.  Still, I thinks to myself, no girl can sass me
+and not get sassed back, neither.
+
+I hearn a scramble behind me which I knowed
+was her getting out of that tree.  And in a minute
+she was in front of me, mad.
+
+"Give me my book," she says.
+
+But I only reads the name of the book out loud,
+fur to aggervate her.  I had on purty good duds,
+but I kind of wisht I had on my Injun rig then.
+You take the girls that always comes down to see
+the passenger train come into the depot in them
+country towns and that Injun rig of mine and
+Looey's always made 'em turn around and look at
+us agin.  I never wisht I had on them Injun duds
+so hard before in my life.  But I couldn't think of
+nothing bright to say, so I jest reads the name of
+that book over to myself agin, kind o' grinning
+like I got a good joke I ain't going to tell any one.
+
+"You give me my book," she says agin, red as
+one of them harvest apples, "or I'll tell Miss Hamp-
+ton you stole it and she'll have you and your show
+arrested."
+
+I reads the name agin.  It was "The Lost Heir."
+I seen I had her good and teased now, so I says:
+"It must be one of these here love stories by the
+way you take on over it."
+
+"It's not," she says, getting ready to cry.  "And
+what right have you got in our wood-lot, anyhow?"
+
+"Well," I says, "I was jest about to move on and
+climb out of it when you hollered to me from that
+tree."
+
+"I didn't!" she says.  But she was mad because
+she knowed she HAD spoke to me first, and she was
+awful sorry she had.
+
+"I thought I hearn you holler," I says, "but
+I guess it must of been a squirrel."  I said it kind
+o' sarcastic like, fur I was still mad with myself
+fur being so dumb when we first seen each other.
+I hadn't no idea it would hurt her feelings as hard
+as it did.  But all of a sudden she begins to wink,
+and her chin trembled, and she turned around short,
+and started to walk off slow.  She was mad with
+herself fur being ketched in a lie, and she was
+wondering what I would think of her fur being
+so bold as to of spoke first to a feller she didn't
+know.
+
+I got up and follered her a little piece.  And it
+come to me all to oncet I had teased her too hard,
+and I was down on myself fur it.
+
+"Say," I says, kind of tagging along beside of
+her, "here's your old book."
+
+But she didn't make no move to take it, and her
+hands was over her face, and she wouldn't pull
+'em down to even look at it.
+
+So I tried agin.
+
+"Well," I says, feeling real mean, "I wisht you
+wouldn't cry.  I didn't go to make you do that."
+
+She drops her hands and whirls around on me,
+mad as a wet hen right off.
+
+"I'm not!  I'm not!" she sings out, and stamps
+her feet.  "I'm not crying!"  But jest then she
+loses her holt on herself and busts out and jest
+natcherally bellers.  "I hate you!" she says, like
+she could of killed me.
+
+That made me kind of dumb agin.  Fur it come
+to me all to oncet I liked that girl awful well.  And
+here I'd up and made her hate me.  I held the book
+out to her agin and says:
+
+"Well, I'm mighty sorry fur that, fur I don't feel
+that-a-way about you a-tall.  Here's your book."
+
+Well, sir, she snatches that book and she gives
+it a sling.  I thought it was going kersplash into
+the crick.  But it didn't.  It hit right into the fork
+of a limb that hung down over the crick, and it all
+spread out when it lit, and stuck in that crotch
+somehow.  She couldn't of slung it that way on
+purpose in a million years.  We both stands and
+looks at it a minute.
+
+"Oh, oh!" she says, "what have I done?  It's
+out of the town library and I'll have to pay for it."
+
+"I'll get it fur you," I says.  But it wasn't no
+easy job.  If I shook that limb it would tumble
+into the crick.  But I clumb the tree and eased out
+on that limb as fur as I dast to.  And, of course,
+jest as I got holt of the book, that limb broke
+and I fell into the crick.  But I had the book.
+It was some soaked, but I reckoned it could still
+be read.
+
+I clumb out and she was jest splitting herself
+laughing at me.  The wet on her face where she
+had cried wasn't dried up yet, and she was laughing
+right through it, kind o' like the sun does to one
+of these here May rainstorms sometimes, and she
+was the purtiest girl I ever seen.  Gosh!--how I
+was getting to like that girl!  And she told me I
+looked like a drowned rat.
+
+Well, that was how Martha and me was inter-
+duced.  She wasn't more'n sixteen, and when she
+found out I was a orphan she was glad, fur she was
+one herself.  Which Miss Hampton that lived in
+that house had took her to raise.  And when I
+tells her how I been travelling around the country
+all summer she claps her hands and she says:
+
+"Oh, you are on a quest!  How romantic!"
+
+I asts her what is a quest.  And she tells me.
+She knowed all about them, fur Martha was con-
+siderable of a reader.  Some of them was longer
+and some of them was shorter, them quests, but
+mostly, Martha says, they was fur a twelvemonth
+and a day.  And then you are released from your
+vow and one of these here queens gives you a whack
+over the shoulder with a sword and says: "Arise,
+Sir Marmeluke, I dub you a night."  And then it
+is legal fur you to go out and rescue people and
+reform them and spear them if they don't see
+things your way, and come between husband and
+wife when they row, and do a heap of good in the
+world.  Well, they was other kind of quests too, but
+mostly you married somebody, or was dubbed
+a night, or found the party you was looking fur,
+in the end.  And Martha had it all fixed up in her
+own mind I was in a quest to find my father.  Fur,
+says she, he is purty certain to be a powerful rich
+man and more'n likely a earl.
+
+The way I was found, Martha says, kind o'
+pints to the idea they was a earl mixed up in it
+somewhere.  She had read a lot about earls, and
+knew their ways.  Mebby my mother was a earl's
+daughter.  Earl's daughters is the worst fur leaving
+you out in baskets, going by what Martha said.
+It is a kind of a habit with them, fur they is awful
+proud people.  But it was a lucky way to start
+life, from all she said, that basket way.  There
+was Moses was left out that way, and when he
+growed up he was made a kind of a president of
+the hull human race, the same as Ruzevelt, and
+figgered out the twelve commandments.  Martha
+would of give anything if she could of only been
+found in a basket like me, I could see that.  But
+she wasn't.  She had jest been left a orphan when
+her folks died.  They wasn't even no hopes she
+had been changed at birth fur another one.  But
+I seen down in under everything Martha kind o'
+thought mebby one of them nights might come
+a-prancing along and wed her in spite of herself,
+or she would be carried off, or something.  She was
+a very romanceful kind of girl.
+
+When I seen she had it figgered out I was in a
+quest fur some high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I
+didn't tell her no different.  I didn't take much
+stock in them earls and nights myself.  So fur as
+I could see they was all furriners of one kind or
+another.  But that thing of being into a quest
+kind of interested me, too.
+
+"How would I know him if I was to run acrost
+him?" I asts her.
+
+"You would feel an Intangible Something," she
+says, "drawing you toward him."
+
+I asts her what kind of a something.  I make out
+from what she says it is some like these fellers that
+can find water with a piece of witch hazel switch.
+You take a switch of it between your thumbs and
+point it up.  Then you shut your eyes and walk
+backwards.  When you get over where the water
+is the witch hazel stick twists around and points
+to the ground.  You dig there and you get a good
+well.  Nobody knows jest why that stick is drawed
+to the ground.  It is like one of these little whirly-
+gig compasses is drawed to the north.  It is the
+same, Martha says, if you is on a quest fur a
+father or a mother, only you have got to be
+worthy of that there quest, she says.  The
+first time you meet the right one you are
+drawed jest like the witch hazel.  That is the
+Intangible Something working on you, she says.
+Martha had learnt a lot about that.  The book
+that had fell in the crick was like that.  She lent
+it to me.
+
+Well, that all sounded kind of reasonable to me.
+I seen that witch hazel work myself.  Old Blindy
+Wolfe, whose eyes had been dead fur so many
+years they had turned plumb white, had that gift,
+and picked out all the places fur wells that was dug
+in our neighbourhood at home.  And I makes up
+my mind I will watch out fur that feeling of being
+drawed wherever I goes after this.  You can't tell
+what will come of them kind of things.  So purty soon
+Martha has to milk the cow, and I goes along back
+to camp thinking about that quest and about what
+a purty girl she is, which we had set there talking
+so long it was nigh sundown and my clothes had
+dried onto me.
+
+When I got over to camp I seen they must be
+something wrong.  Looey was setting in the grass
+under the wagon looking kind of sour and kind of
+worried and watching the doctor.  The doctor
+was jest inside the tent, and he was looking queer
+too, and not cheerful, which he was usually.
+
+The doctor looks at me like he don't skeercly
+know me.  Which he don't.  He has one of them
+quiet kind of drunks on.  Which Looey explains
+is bound to come every so often.  He don't do
+nothing mean, but jest gets low-sperrited and
+won't talk to no one.  Then all of a sudden he will
+go down town and walk up and down the main
+streets, orderly, but looking hard into people's
+faces, mostly women's faces.  Oncet, Looey says,
+they was big trouble over it.  They was in a store
+in a good-sized town, and he took hold of a woman's
+chin, and tilted her face back, and looked at her
+hard, and most scared her to death, and they was
+nearly being a riot there.  And he was jailed and
+had to pay a big fine.  Since then Looey always
+follers him around when he is that-a-way.
+
+Well, that night Doctor Kirby is too fur gone
+fur us to have our show.  He jest sets and stares
+and stares at the fire, and his eyes looks like they
+is another fire inside of his head, and he is hurting
+outside and in.  Looey and me watches him from
+the shadders fur a long time before we turns in,
+and the last thing I seen before I went to sleep was
+him setting there with his face in his hands, staring,
+and his lips moving now and then like he was talking
+to himself.
+
+The next day he is asleep all morning.  But that
+day he don't drink any more, and Looey says mebby
+it ain't going to be one of the reg'lar pifflicated
+kind.  I seen Martha agin that day, too--twicet
+I has talks with her.  I told her about the doctor.
+
+"Is he into a quest, do you think?" I asts her.
+
+She says she thinks it is remorse fur some crime
+he has done.  But I couldn't figger Doctor Kirby
+would of done none.  So that night after the show
+I says to him, innocent-like:
+
+"Doctor Kirby, what is a quest?"  He looks at
+me kind of queer.
+
+"Wherefore," says he, "this sudden thirst for
+enlightenment?"
+
+"I jest run acrost the word accidental-like," I
+told him.
+
+He looks at me awful hard, his eyes jest natcherally
+digging into me.  I felt like he knowed I had set
+out to pump him.  I wisht I hadn't tried it.  Then
+he tells me a quest is a hunt.  And I'm glad
+that's over with.  But it ain't.  Fur purty soon
+he says:
+
+"Danny, did you ever hear of Lady Clara Vere
+de Vere?"
+
+"No," I says, "who is she?"
+
+"A lady friend of Lord Tennyson's," he says,
+"whose manners were above reproach."
+
+"Well," I says, "she sounds kind of like a medi-
+cine to me."
+
+"Lady Clara," he says, "and all the other Vere
+de Veres, were people with manners we should
+try to imitate.  If Lady Clara had been here last
+night when I was talking to myself, Danny, her
+manners wouldn't have let her listen to what I
+was talking about."
+
+"I didn't listen!" I says.  Fur I seen what he
+was driving at now with them Vere de Veres.  He
+thought I had ast him what a quest was because he
+was on one.  I was certain of that, now.  He
+wasn't quite sure what he had been talking about,
+and he wanted to see how much I had hearn.  I
+thinks to myself it must be a awful funny kind of
+hunt he is on, if he only hunts when he is in that
+fix.  But I acted real innocent and like my feelings
+was hurt, and he believed me.  Purty soon he says,
+cheerful like:
+
+"There was a girl talking to you to-day, Danny."
+
+"Mebby they was," I says, "and mebby they
+wasn't."  But I felt my face getting red all the
+same, and was mad because it did.  He grinned
+kind of aggervating at me and says some poetry
+at me about in the spring a young man's frenzy
+likely turns to thoughts of love.
+
+"Well," I says, kind of sheepish-like, "this is
+summer-time, and purty nigh autumn."  Then I
+seen I'd jest as good as owned up I liked Martha,
+and was kind of mad at myself fur that.  But I
+told him some more about her, too.  Somehow
+I jest couldn't help it.  He laughs at me and goes
+on into the tent.
+
+I laid there and looked at the fire fur quite a
+spell, outside the tent.  I was thinking, if all them
+tales wasn't jest dern foolishness, how I wisht I
+would really find a dad that was a high-mucky-
+muck and could come back in an automobile and
+take her away.  I laid there fur a long, long time;
+it must of been fur a couple of hours.  I supposed
+the doctor had went to sleep.
+
+But all of a sudden I looks up, and he is in the
+door of the tent staring at me.  I seen he had been
+in there at it hard agin, and thinking, quiet-like,
+all this time.  He stood there in the doorway of
+the tent, with the firelight onto his face and his
+red beard, and his arms stretched out, holding to
+the canvas and looking at me strange and wild.
+Then he moved his hand up and down at me, and
+he says:
+
+"If she's fool enough to love you, treat her well--
+treat her well.  For if you don't, you can never
+run away from the hell you'll carry in your own
+heart."
+
+And he kind of doubled up and pitched forward
+when he said that, and if I hadn't ketched him
+he would of fell right acrost the fire.  He was
+plumb pifflicated.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Martha wouldn't of took anything fur
+being around Miss Hampton, she said.
+Miss Hampton was kind of quiet and
+sweet and pale looking, and nobody ever thought
+of talking loud or raising any fuss when she was
+around.  She had enough money of her own to
+run herself on, and she kep' to herself a good deal.
+She had come to that town from no one knowed
+where, years ago, and bought that place.  Fur all
+of her being so gentle and easy and talking with
+one of them soft, drawly kind of voices, Martha
+says, no one had ever dared to ast her about herself,
+though they was a lot of women in that town that
+was wishful to.
+
+But Martha said she knowed what Miss Hamp-
+ton's secret was, and she hadn't told no one, neither.
+Which she told me, and all the promising I done
+about not telling would of made the cold chills
+run up your back, it was so solemn.  Miss Hampton
+had been jilted years ago, Martha said, and the
+name of the jilter was David Armstrong.  Well,
+he must of been a low down sort of man.  Martha
+said if things was only fixed in this country like they
+ought to be, she would of sent a night to find that
+David Armstrong.  And that would of ended up in a
+mortal combat, and the night would have cleaved him.
+
+"Yes," says I, "and then you would of married
+that there night, I suppose."
+
+She says she would of.
+
+"Well," says I, "mebby you would of and mebby
+you wouldn't of.  If he cleaved David Armstrong,
+that night would likely be arrested fur it."
+
+Martha says if he was she would wait outside
+his dungeon keep fur years and years, till she was
+a old woman with gray in her hair, and every day
+they would give lingering looks at each other through
+the window bars.  And they would be happy that-
+a-way.  And she would get her a white dove and
+train it so it would fly up to that window and take in
+notes to him, and he would send notes back that-a-
+way, and they would both be awful sad and ro-
+manceful and contented doing that-a-way fur ever
+and ever.
+
+Well, I never took no stock in them mournful
+ways of being happy.  I couldn't of riz up to being
+a night fur Martha.  She expected too much of one.
+I thought it over fur a little spell without saying
+anything, and I tried to make myself believe I would
+of liked all that dove business.  But it wasn't no
+use pertending.  I knowed I would get tired of it.
+
+"Martha," I says, "mebby these here nights is
+all right, and mebby they ain't.  I never seen
+one, and I don't know.  And, mind you, I ain't
+saying a word agin their way of acting.  I can't
+say how I would of been myself, if I had been brung
+up like them.  But it looks to me, from some of
+the things you've said about 'em, they must have
+a dern fool streak in 'em somewheres."
+
+I was kind of jealous of them nights, I guess, or
+I wouldn't of run 'em down that-a-way behind
+their backs.  But the way she was always taking
+on over them was calkelated to make me see I
+wasn't knee-high to a duck in Martha's mind
+when one of them nights popped into her head.
+When I run 'em down that-a-way, she says to the
+blind all things is blind, and if I had any chivalry
+into me myself I'd of seen they wasn't jest dern
+fools, but noble, and seen it easy.  And she sighed,
+like she'd looked fur better things from me.  When
+I hearn her do that I felt sorry I hadn't come up
+to her expectances.  So I says:
+
+"Martha, it's no use pertending I could stay in
+one of them jails and keep happy at it.  I got to
+be outdoors.  But I tell you what I can do, if it
+will make you feel any better.  If I ever happen to
+run acrost this here David Armstrong, and he is
+anywheres near my size, I'll lick him fur you.
+And if he's too hefty fur me to lick him fair," I
+says, "and I get a good chancet I will hit him with
+a piece of railroad iron fur you."
+
+Of course, I knowed I would never find him.  But
+what I said seemed to brighten her up a little.
+
+"But," says I, "if I went too fur with it, and was
+hung fur it, how would you feel then, Martha?"
+
+Well, sir, that didn't jar Martha none.  She
+looked kind of dreamy and said mebby she would
+go and jine a convent and be a nun.  And when
+she got to be the head nun she would build a chapel
+over the tomb where I was buried in.  And every
+year, on the day of the month I was hung on, she
+would lead all the other nuns into that chapel, and
+the organ would play mournful, and each nun as
+passed would lay down a bunch of white roses onto
+my tomb.  I reckon that orter made me feel good,
+but somehow it didn't.
+
+So I changed the subject, and asts her why I ain't
+seen Miss Hampton around the place none.  Martha
+says she has a bad sick headache and ain't been
+outside the house fur four or five days.  I asts
+her why she don't wait on her.  But she don't
+want her to, Martha says.  She's been staying in
+the house ever since we been in town, and jest
+wants to be let alone.  I thinks all that is kind of
+funny.  And then I seen from the way Martha is
+answering my questions that she is holding back
+something she would like to tell, but don't think
+she orter tell.  I leaves her alone and purty soon
+she says:
+
+"Do you believe in ghosts?"
+
+I tell her sometimes I think I don't believe in 'em,
+and sometimes I think I do, but anyhow I would
+hate to see one.  I asts her why does she ast.
+
+"Because," she says, "because--but I hadn't
+ought to tell you."
+
+"It's daylight," I says; "it's no use being scared
+to tell now."
+
+"It ain't that," she says, "but it's a secret."
+
+When she said it was a secret, I knowed she would
+tell.  Martha liked having her friends help her to
+keep a secret.
+
+"I think Miss Hampton has seen one," she says,
+finally, "and that her staying indoors has something
+to do with that."
+
+Then she tells me.  The night of the day after
+we camped there, her and Miss Hampton was out
+fur a walk.  We didn't have any show that night.
+They passed right by our camp, and they seen us
+there by the fire, all three of us.  But they was in
+the road in the dark, and we was all in the light, so
+none of the three of us seen them.  Miss Hampton
+was kind of scared of us, first glance, fur she gasped
+and grabbed holt of Martha's arm all of a sudden
+so tight she pinched it.  Which it was very natcheral
+that she would be startled, coming across three
+strange men all of a sudden at night around a turn
+in the road.  They went along home, and Martha
+went inside and lighted a lamp, but Miss Hampton
+lingered on the porch fur a minute.  Jest as she
+lit the lamp Martha hearn another little gasp, or
+kind of sigh, from Miss Hampton out there on the
+porch.  Then they was the sound of her falling
+down.  Martha ran out with the lamp, and she was
+laying there.  She had fainted and keeled over.
+Martha said jest in the minute she had left her
+alone on the porch was when Miss Hampton must
+of seen the ghost.  Martha brung her to, and she
+was looking puzzled and wild-like both to oncet.
+Martha asts her what is the matter.
+
+"Nothing," she says, rubbing her fingers over her
+forehead in a helpless kind of way, "nothing."
+
+"You look like you had seen a ghost," Martha
+tells her.
+
+Miss Hampton looks at Martha awful funny,
+and then she says mebby she HAS seen a ghost, and
+goes along upstairs to bed.  And since then she
+ain't been out of the house.  She tells Martha it is
+a sick headache, but Martha says she knows it
+ain't.  She thinks she is scared of something.
+
+"Scared?" I says.  "She wouldn't see no more
+ghosts in the daytime."
+
+Martha says how do I know she wouldn't?  She
+knows a lot about ghosts of all kinds, Martha does.
+
+Horses and dogs can see them easier than humans,
+even in the daytime, and it makes their hair stand
+up when they do.  But some humans that have
+the gift can see them in the daytime like an animal.
+And Martha asts me how can I tell but Miss Hamp-
+ton is like that?
+
+"Well, then," I says, "she must be a witch.
+And if she is a witch why is she scared of them
+a-tall?"
+
+But Martha says if you have second sight you
+don't need to be a witch to see them in the day-
+time.
+
+Well, you can never tell about them ghosts.
+Some says one thing and some says another.  Old
+Mis' Primrose, in our town, she always believed in
+'em firm till her husband died.  When he was dying
+they fixed it up he was to come back and visit her.
+She told him he had to, and he promised.  And she
+left the front door open fur him night after night
+fur nigh a year, in all kinds of weather; but Prim-
+rose never come.  Mis' Primrose says he never
+lied to her, and he always done jest as she told
+him, and if he could of come she knowed he would;
+and when he didn't she quit believing in ghosts.
+But they was others in our town said it didn't
+prove nothing at all.  They said Primrose had
+really been lying to her all his life, because she
+was so bossy he had to lie to keep peace in the
+fambly, and she never ketched on.  Well, if I was
+a ghost and had of been Mis' Primrose's husband
+when I was a human, I wouldn't of come back
+neither, even if she had of bully-ragged me into one
+of them death-bed promises.  I guess Primrose
+figgered he had earnt a rest.
+
+If they is ghosts, what comfort they can get out
+of coming back where they ain't wanted and scaring
+folks is more'n I can see.  It's kind of low down,
+I think, and foolish too.  Them kind of ghosts is
+like these here overgrown smart alecs that scares
+kids.  They think they are mighty cute, but they
+ain't.  They are jest foolish.  A human, or a ghost
+either, that does things like that is jest simply
+got no principle to him.  I hearn a lot of talk
+about 'em, first and last, and I ain't ready to say
+they ain't no ghosts, nor yet ready to say they
+is any.  To say they is any is to say something
+that is too plumb unlikely.  And too many people
+has saw them fur me to say they ain't any.  But
+if they is, or they ain't, so fur as I can see, it don't
+make much difference.  Fur they never do nothing,
+besides scaring you, except to rap on tables and
+tell fortunes, and such fool things.  Which a human
+can do it all better and save the expense of paying
+money to one of these here sperrit mediums that
+travels around and makes 'em perform.  But all
+the same they has been nights I has felt different
+about 'em myself, and less hasty to run 'em down.
+Well, it don't do no good to speak harsh of no one,
+not even a ghost or a ordinary dead man, and if I
+was to see a ghost, mebby I would be all the scareder
+fur what I have jest wrote.
+
+Well, with all the talking back and forth we done
+about them ghosts we couldn't agree.  That after-
+noon it seemed like we couldn't agree about any-
+thing.  I knowed we would be going away from
+there before long, and I says to myself before I
+go I'm going to have that girl fur my girl, or else
+know the reason why.  No matter what I was
+talking about, that idea was in the back of my
+head, and somehow it kind of made me want to
+pick fusses with her, too.  We was setting on a
+log, purty deep into the woods, and there come a
+time when neither of us had said nothing fur quite
+a spell.  But after a while I says:
+
+"Martha, we'll be going away from here in two,
+three days now."
+
+She never said nothing.
+
+"Will you be sorry?" I asts her.
+
+She says she will be sorry.
+
+"Well," I says, "WHY will you be sorry?"
+
+I thought she would say because _I_ was going.
+And then I would be finding out whether she liked
+me a lot.  But she says the reason she will be sorry
+is because there will be no one new to talk to about
+things both has read.  I was considerable took
+down when she said that.
+
+"Martha," I says, "it's more'n likely I won't
+never see you agin after I go away."
+
+She says that kind of parting comes between the
+best of friends.
+
+I seen I wasn't getting along very fast, nor
+saying what I wanted to say.  I reckon one of them
+Sir Marmeluke fellers would of knowed what to
+say.  Or Doctor Kirby would.  Or mebby even
+Looey would of said it better than I could.  So I
+was kind of mad with myself, and I says, mean-like:
+
+"If you don't care, of course, I don't care, neither."
+
+She never answered that, so I gets up and makes
+like I am starting off.
+
+"I was going to give you some of them there Injun
+feathers of mine to remember me by," I tells her,
+"but if you don't want 'em, there's plenty of others
+would be glad to take 'em."
+
+But she says she would like to have them.
+
+"Well," I says, "I will bring them to you to-
+morrow afternoon."
+
+She says, "Thank you."
+
+Finally I couldn't stand it no longer.  I got
+brave all of a sudden, and busted out: "Martha,
+I--I--I--"
+
+But I got to stuttering, and my braveness stut-
+tered itself away.  And I finishes up by saying:
+
+"I like you a hull lot, Martha."  Which wasn't
+jest exactly what I had planned fur to say.
+
+Martha, she says she kind of likes me, too.
+
+"Martha," I says, "I like you more'n any girl
+I ever run acrost before."
+
+She says, "Thank you," agin.  The way she
+said it riled me up.  She said it like she didn't
+know what I meant, nor what I was trying to get
+out of me.  But she did know all the time.  I
+knowed she did.  She knowed I knowed it, too.
+Gosh-dern it, I says to myself, here I am wasting
+all this time jest TALKING to her.  The right thing
+to do come to me all of a sudden, and like to took
+my breath away.  But I done it.  I grabbed her
+and I kissed her.
+
+Twice.  And then agin.  Because the first was
+on the chin on account of her jerking her head
+back.  And the second one she didn't help me none.
+But the third time she helped me a little.  And
+the ones after that she helped me considerable.
+
+Well, they ain't no use trying to talk about the
+rest of that afternoon.  I couldn't rightly describe
+it if I wanted to.  And I reckon it's none of any-
+body's business.
+
+Well, it makes you feel kind of funny.  You
+want to go out and pick on somebody about four
+sizes bigger'n you are and knock the socks off'n
+him.  It stands to reason others has felt that-a-way,
+but you don't believe it.  You want to tell people
+about it one minute.  The next minute you have
+got chills and ague fur fear some one will guess it.
+And you think the way you are about her is going
+to last fur always.
+
+That evening, when I was cooking supper, I
+laughed every time I was spoke to.  When Looey
+and I was hitching up to drive down town to give
+the show, one of the hosses stepped on his foot and
+I laughed at that, and there was purty nigh a fight.
+And I was handling some bottles and broke one
+and cut my hand on a piece of glass.  I held it
+out fur a minute dumb-like, with the blood and
+medicine dripping off of it, and all of a sudden I
+busted out laughing agin.  The doctor asts if I am
+crazy.  And Looey says he has thought I was from
+the very first, and some night him and the doctor
+will be killed whilst asleep.  One of the things we
+have every night in the show is an Injun dance,
+and Looey and I sings what the doctor calls the
+Siwash war chant, whirling round and round each
+other, and making licks at each other with our
+tommyhawks, and letting out sudden wild yips
+in the midst of that chant.  That night I like to
+of killed Looey with that tommyhawk, I was feeling
+so good.  If it had been a real one, instead of painted-up
+wood, I would of killed Looey, the lick I give him.
+The worst part of that was that, after the show,
+when we got back to camp and the hosses was
+picketed out fur the night, I had to tell Looey all
+about how I felt fur an explanation of why I hit
+him.
+
+Which it made Looey right low in his sperrits,
+and he shakes his head and says no good will come
+of it.
+
+"Did you ever hear of Romeo and Joliet?" he
+says:
+
+"Mebby," I says, "but what it was I hearn I
+can't remember.  What about them?"
+
+"Well," he says, "they carried on the same as
+you.  And now where are they?"
+
+"Well," I says, "where are they?"
+
+"In the tomb," says Looey, very sad, like they
+was closte personal friends of his'n.  And he told
+me all about them and how Young Cobalt had done
+fur them.  But from what I could make out it all
+happened away back in the early days.  And
+shucks!--I didn't care a dern, anyhow.  I told
+him so.
+
+"Well," he says, "It's been the history of the
+world that it brings trouble."  And he says to
+look at Damon and Pythias, and Othello and the
+Merchant of Venus.  And he named about a
+hundred prominent couples like that out of Shake-
+speare's works.
+
+"But it ends happy sometimes," I says.
+
+"Not when it is true love it don't," says Looey.
+"Look at Anthony and Cleopatra."
+
+"Yes," I says, sarcastic like, "I suppose they
+are in the tomb, too?"
+
+"They are," says Looey, awful solemn.
+
+"Yes," I says, "and so is Adam and Eve and Dan
+and Burrsheba and all the rest of them old-timers.
+But I bet they had a good time while they lasted."
+
+Looey shakes his head solemn and sighs and
+goes to sleep very mournful, like he has to give me
+up fur lost.  But I can't sleep none myself.  So
+purty soon I gets up and puts on my shoes and
+sneaks through the wood-lot and through the gap
+in the fence by the apple tree and into Miss Hamp-
+ton's yard.
+
+It was a beauty of a moonlight night, that white
+and clear and clean you could almost see to read
+by it, like all of everything had been scoured as
+bright as the bottom of a tin pan.  And the
+shadders was soft and thick and velvety and laid
+kind of brownish-greeney on the grass.  I flopped
+down in the shadder of some lilac bushes and won-
+dered which was Martha's window.  I knowed she
+would be in bed long ago, but--  Well, I was jest
+plumb foolish that night, and I couldn't of kept
+away fur any money.  That moonlight had got
+into my head, it seemed like, and made me drunk.
+But I would rather be looney that-a-way than to
+have as much sense as King Solomon and all his
+adverbs.  I was that looney that if I had knowed
+any poetry I would of said it out loud, right up
+toward that window.  I never knowed why poetry
+was made up before that night.  But the only
+poetry I could think of was about there was a man
+named Furgeson that lived on Market Street, and
+he had a one-eyed Thomas cat that couldn't well
+be beat.  Which it didn't seem to fit the case, so
+I didn't say her.
+
+The porch of that house was part covered with
+vines, but they was kind of gaped apart at one
+corner.  As I laid there in the shadder of the bushes
+I hearn a fluttering movement, light and gentle,
+on that porch.  Then, all of a sudden, I seen some
+one standing on the edge of the porch where the
+vines was gaped apart, and the moonlight was
+falling onto them.  They must of come there awful
+soft and still.  Whoever it was couldn't see into
+the shadder where I laid, that is, if it was a human
+and not a ghost.  Fur my first thought was it might
+be one of them ghosts I had been running down so
+that very day, and mebby the same one Miss Hamp-
+ton seen on that very same porch.  I thought I
+was in fur it then, mebby, and I felt like some one
+had whispered to the back of my neck it ought
+to be scared.  And I WAS scared clean up into my
+hair.  I stared hard, fur I couldn't take my eyes
+away.  Then purty soon I seen if it was a ghost it
+must be a woman ghost.  Fur it was dressed in
+light-coloured clothes that moved jest a little in
+the breeze, and the clothes was so near the colour
+of the moonlight they seemed to kind of silver
+into it.  You would of said it had jest floated
+there, and was waiting fur to float away agin when
+the breeze blowed a little stronger, or the moon
+drawed it.
+
+It didn't move fur ever so long.  Then it leaned
+forward through the gap in the vines, and I seen
+the face real plain.  It wasn't no ghost, it was a
+lady.  Then I knowed it must be Miss Hampton
+standing there.  Away off through the trees our
+camp fire sent up jest a dull kind of a glow.  She
+was standing there looking at that.  I wondered
+why.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+The next day we broke camp and was gone
+from that place, and I took away with
+me the half of a ring me and Martha had
+chopped in two.  We kept on going, and by the
+time punkins and county fairs was getting ripe
+we was into the upper left-hand corner of Ohio.
+And there Looey left us.
+
+One day Doctor Kirby and me was walking
+along the main street of a little town and we seen
+a bang-up funeral percession coming.  It must
+of been one of the Grand Army of the Republicans,
+fur they was some of the old soldiers in buggies
+riding along behind, and a big string of people
+follering in more buggies and some on foot.  Every-
+body was looking mighty sollum.  But they was
+one man setting beside the undertaker on the seat
+of the hearse that was looking sollumer than them
+all.  It was Looey, and I'll bet the corpse himself
+would of felt proud and happy and contented if
+he could of knowed the style Looey was giving
+that funeral.
+
+It wasn't nothing Looey done, fur he didn't
+do nothing but jest set there with his arms folded
+onto his bosom and look sad.  But he done THAT
+better than any one else.  He done it so well that
+you forgot the corpse was the chief party to that
+funeral.  Looey took all the glory from him.  He
+had jest natcherally stole that funeral away from
+its rightful owner with his enjoyment of it.  He
+seen the doctor and me as the hearse went by our
+corner, but he never let on.  A couple of hours
+later Looey comes into camp and says he is going
+to quit.
+
+The doctor asts him if he has inherited money.
+
+"No," says Looey, "but my aunt has given me
+a chancet to go into business."
+
+Looey says he was born nigh there, and was
+prowling around town the day before and run
+acrost an old aunt of his'n he had forgot all about.
+She is awful respectable and religious and ashamed
+of him being into a travelling show.  And she has
+offered to lend him enough to buy a half-share in a
+business.
+
+"Well," says the doctor, "I hope it will be some-
+thing you are fitted for and will enjoy.  But I've
+noticed that after a man gets the habit of roaming
+around this terrestial ball it's mighty hard to settle
+down and watch his vine and fig tree grow."
+
+Looey smiles in a sad sort of a way, which he
+seldom smiled fur anything, and says he guesses
+he'll like the business.  He says they ain't many
+businesses he could take to.  Most of them makes
+you forget this world is but a fleeting show.  But
+he has found a business which keeps you reminded
+all the time that dust is dust and ash to ashes shalt
+return.  When he first went into the medicine
+business, he said, he was drawed to it by the diseases
+and the sudden dyings-off it always kept him in
+mind of.  He thought they wasn't no other business
+could lay over it fur that kind of comfort.  But
+he has found out his mistake.
+
+"What kind of business are you going into?"
+asts the doctor.
+
+"I am going to be an undertaker," says Looey.
+"My aunt says this town needs the right kind of
+an undertaker bad."
+
+Mr. Wilcox, the undertaker that town has, is
+getting purty old and shaky, Looey says, and
+young Mr. Wilcox, his son, is too light-minded and
+goes at things too brisk and airy to give it the
+right kind of a send-off.  People don't want him
+joking around their corpses and he is a fat young
+man and can't help making puns even in the presence
+of the departed.  Old Mr. Wilcox's eyesight is
+getting so poor he made a scandal in that town only
+the week before.  He was composing a departed's
+face into a last smile, but he went too fur with it,
+and give the departed one of them awful mean,
+devilish kind of grins, like he had died with a bad
+temper on.  By the time the departed's fambly
+had found it out, things had went too fur, and the
+face had set that-a-way, so it wasn't safe to try
+to change it any.
+
+Old Mr. Wilcox had several brands of last looks.
+One was called: Bear Up, for We Will Meet Again."
+The one that had went wrong was his favourite
+look, named: O Death, Where is Thy Victory?"
+
+Looey's aunt says she will buy him a partnership
+if she is satisfied he can fill the town's needs.  They
+have a talk with the Wilcoxes, and he rides on the
+hearse that day fur a try-out.  His aunt peeks out
+behind her bedroom curtains as the percession goes
+by her house, and when she sees the style Looey is
+giving to that funeral, and how easy it comes to
+him, that settles it with her on the spot.  And it
+seems the hull dern town liked it, too, including
+the departed's fambly.
+
+Looey says they is a lot of chancet fur improve-
+ments in the undertaking game by one whose heart
+is in his work, and he is going into that business
+to make a success of it, and try and get all the funeral
+trade fur miles around.  He reads us an advertise-
+ment of the new firm he has been figgering out fur
+that town's weekly paper.  I cut a copy out when
+it was printed, and it is about the genteelest thing
+like that I even seen, as follers:
+
+
+WILCOX AND SIMMS
+Invite Your Patronage
+
+This earth is but a fleeting show, and the blank-winged angels
+wait for all.  It is always a satisfaction to remember that
+all possible has been done for the deceased.
+
+
+See Our New Line of Coffins
+Lined Caskets a Specialty
+Lodge Work Solicited
+
+
+Time and tide wait for no man, and his days are few and full
+of troubles.  The paths of glory lead but to the grave, and
+none can tell when mortal feet may stumble.
+
+When in Town Drop in and Inspect
+Our New Embalming Outfit.  It
+is a Pleasure to Show Goods
+and Tools Even if Your
+Family Needs no Work
+Done Just Yet
+
+
+Outfits for mourners who have been bereaved on short notice a
+specialty.  We take orders for tombstones.  Look at our
+line of shrouds, robes, and black suits for either sex and
+any age.  Give us just one call, and you will entrust future
+embalmings and obsequies in your family to no other firm.
+
+
+WILCOX AND SIMMS
+Main Street, Near Depot
+
+
+The doctor, he reads it over careful and says she
+orter drum up trade, all right.  Looey tells us that
+mebby, if he can get that town educated up to it,
+he will put in a creamatory, where he will burn
+them, too, but will go slow, fur that there sollum
+and beautiful way of returning ash to ashes might
+make some prejudice in such a religious town.
+
+The last we seen of Looey was a couple of days
+later when we told him good-bye in his shop.  Old
+Mr. Wilcox was explaining to him the science of
+them last looks he was so famous at when he was
+a younger man.  Young Mr. Wilcox was laying on
+a table fur Looey to practise on, and Looey was
+learning fast.  But he nearly broke down when
+he said good-bye, fur he liked the doctor.
+
+"Doc," he says, "you've been a good friend,
+and I won't never forget you.  They ain't much I
+can do, and in this deceitful world words is less than
+actions.  But if you ever was to die within a hun-
+dred miles of me, I'd go," he says, "and no other
+hands but mine should lay you out.  And it wouldn't
+cost you a cent, either.  Nor you neither, Danny."
+
+We thanked him kindly fur the offer, and
+went.
+
+The next town we come to there was a county
+fair, and the doctor run acrost an old pal of his'n
+who had a show on the grounds and wanted to hire
+him fur what he called a ballyhoo man.  Which
+was the first I ever hearn them called that, but I
+got better acquainted with them since.  They are
+the fellers that stands out in front and gets you
+all excited about the Siamese twins or the bearded
+lady or the snake-charmer or the Circassian beauties
+or whatever it is inside the tent, as represented
+upon the canvas.  The doctor says he will do it
+fur a week, jest fur fun, and mebby pick up another
+feller to take Looey's place out there.
+
+This feller's name is Watty Sanders, and his
+wife is a fat lady in his own show and very good-
+natured when not intoxicated nor mad at Watty.
+She was billed on the curtains outside fur five hun-
+dred and fifty pounds, and Watty says she really
+does weigh nigh on to four hundred.  But being
+a fat lady's husband ain't no bed of rosy
+ease at that, Watty tells the doctor.  It's like
+every other trade--it has its own pertic'ler
+responsibilities and troubles.  She is a turrible
+expense to Watty on account of eating so much.
+The tales that feller told of how hard he has to
+hustle showing her off in order to support her
+appetite would of drawed tears from a pawn-
+broker's sign, as Doctor Kirby says.  Which he
+found it cheaper fur his hull show to board and
+sleep in the tent, and we done likewise.
+
+Well, I got a job with that show myself.  Watty
+had a wild man canvas but no wild man, so he
+made me an offer and I took him up.  I was from
+Borneo, where they're all supposed to be captured.
+Jest as Doctor Kirby would get to his talk about
+how the wild man had been ketched after great
+struggle and expense, with four men killed and
+another crippled, there would be an awful rumpus on
+the inside of the tent, with wild howlings and the
+sound of revolvers shot off and a woman screaming.
+Then I would come busting out all blacked up from
+head to heel with no more clothes on than the law
+pervided fur, yipping loud and shaking a big spear
+and rolling my eyes, and Watty would come rushing
+after me firing his revolver.  I would make fur
+the doctor and draw my spear back to jab it clean
+through him, and Watty would grab my arm.
+And the doctor would whirl round and they would
+wrastle me to the ground and I would be hand-
+cuffed and dragged back into the tent, still howling
+and struggling to break loose.  On the inside my
+part of the show was to be wild in a cage.  I would
+be chained to the floor, and every now and then
+I would get wilder and rattle my chains and
+shake the bars and make jumps at the crowd
+and carry on, and make believe I was too mad
+to eat the pieces of raw meat Watty throwed into
+the cage.
+
+Watty had a snake-charmer woman, with an
+awful long, bony kind of neck, working fur him,
+and another feller that was her husband and eat
+glass.  The show opened up with them two doing
+what they said was a comic turn.  Then the fat
+lady come on.  Whilst everybody was admiring
+her size, and looking at the number of pounds on
+them big cheat scales Watty weighed her on, the
+long-necked one would be changing to her snake
+clothes.  Which she only had one snake, and he
+had been in the business so long, and was so kind
+of worn out and tired with being charmed so much,
+it always seemed like a pity to me the way she
+would take and twist him around.  I guess they
+never was a snake was worked harder fur the little
+bit he got to eat, nor got no sicker of a woman's
+society than poor old Reginald did.  After Regi-
+nald had been charmed a while, it would be the
+glass eater's turn.  Which he really eat it, and the
+doctor says that kind always dies before they is
+fifty.  I never knowed his right name, but what
+he went by was The Human Ostrich.
+
+Watty's wife was awful jealous of Mrs. Ostrich,
+fur she got the idea she was carrying on with Watty.
+One night I hearn an argument from the fenced-
+off part of the tent Watty and his wife slept in.
+She was setting on Watty's chest and he was gasp-
+ing fur mercy.
+
+"You know it ain't true," says Watty, kind of
+smothered-like.
+
+"It is," says she, "you own up it is!"  And she
+give him a jounce.
+
+"No, darling," he gets out of him, "you know I
+never could bear them thin, scrawny kind of women."
+And he begins to call her pet names of all kinds and
+beg her please, if she won't get off complete, to set
+somewheres else a minute, fur his chest he can
+feel giving way, and his ribs caving in.  He called
+her his plump little woman three or four times and
+she must of softened up some, fur she moved and
+his voice come stronger, but not less meek and
+lowly.  And he follers it up:
+
+"Dolly, darling," he says, "I bet I know something
+my little woman don't know."
+
+"What is it?" the fat lady asts him.
+
+"You don't know what a cruel, weak stomach
+your hubby has got," Watty says, awful coaxing
+like, "or you wouldn't bear down quite so hard
+onto it--please, Dolly!"
+
+She begins to blubber and say he is making fun
+of her big size, and if he is mean to her any more
+or ever looks at another woman agin she will take
+anti-fat and fade away to nothing and ruin his show,
+and it is awful hard to be made a joke of all her life
+and not have no steady home nor nothing like
+other women does.
+
+"You know I worship every pound of you,"
+little woman," says Watty, still coaxing.  "Why
+can't you trust me?  You know, Dolly, darling,
+I wouldn't take your weight in gold for you."
+And he tells her they never was but once in all his
+life he has so much as turned his head to look at
+another woman, and that was by way of a plutonic
+admiration, and no flirting intended, he says.
+And even then it was before he had met his own
+little woman.  And that other woman, he says,
+was plump too, fur he wouldn't never look at none
+but a plump woman.
+
+"What did she weigh?" asts Watty's wife.  He
+tells her a measly little three hundred pound.
+
+"But she wasn't refined like my little woman,"
+says Watty, "and when I seen that I passed her
+up."  And inch by inch Watty coaxed her clean
+off of him.
+
+But the next day she hearn him and Mrs. Ostrich
+giggling about something, and she has a reg'lar
+tantrum, and jest fur meanness goes out and falls
+down on the race track, pertending she has fainted,
+and they can't move her no ways, not even roll
+her.  But finally they rousted her out of that by
+one of these here sprinkling carts backing up agin
+her and turning loose.
+
+But aside from them occasional mean streaks
+Dolly was real nice, and I kind of got to liking her.
+She tells me that because she is so fat no one won't
+take her serious like a human being, and she wisht
+she was like other women and had a fambly.  That
+woman wanted a baby, too, and I bet she would
+of been good to it, fur she was awful good to animals.
+She had been big from a little girl, and never got
+no sympathy when sick, nor nothing, and even
+whilst she played with dolls as a kid she knowed
+she looked ridiculous, and was laughed at.  And
+by jings!--they was the funniest thing come to
+light before we left that crowd.  That poor, derned,
+old, fat fool HAD a doll yet, all hid away, and when
+she was alone she used to take it out and cuddle it.
+Well, Dolly never had many friends, and you
+couldn't blame her much if she did drink a little
+too much now and then, or get mad at Watty fur
+his goings-on and kneel down on him whilst he was
+asleep.  Them was her only faults and I liked the
+old girl.  Yet I could see Watty had his troubles
+too.
+
+That show busted up before the fair closed.  Fur
+one day Watty's wife gets mad at Mrs. Ostrich
+and tries to set on her.  And then Mrs. Ostrich
+gets mad too, and sicks Reginald onto her.  Watty's
+wife is awful scared of Reginald, who don't really
+have ambition enough to bite no one, let alone a lady
+built so round everywhere he couldn't of got a
+grip on her.  And as fur as wrapping himself
+around her and squashing her to death, Reginald
+never seen the day he could reach that fur.  Regi-
+nald's feelings is plumb friendly toward Dolly
+when he is turned loose, but she don't know that,
+and she has some hysterics and faints in earnest
+this time.  Well, they was an awful hullaballo
+when she come to, and fur the sake of peace in the
+fambly Watty has to fire Mr. and Mrs. Ostrich
+and poor old Reginald out of their jobs, and the
+show is busted.  So Doctor Kirby and me lit out
+fur other parts agin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+We was jogging along one afternoon not fur
+from a good-sized town at the top of Ohio,
+right on the lake, when we run acrost
+some remainders of a busted circus riding in a stake
+and chain wagon.  They was two fellers--both
+jugglers, acrobats, and tumblers--and a balloon.
+The circus had busted without paying them nothing
+but promises fur months and months, and they had
+took the team and wagon and balloon by attach-
+ment, they said.  They was carting her from the
+little burg the show busted in to that good-sized
+town on the lake.  They would sell the team and
+wagon there and get money enough to put an
+advertisement in the Billboard, which is like a Bible
+to them showmen, that they had a balloon to sell
+and was at liberty.
+
+One of them was the slimmest, lightest-footed,
+quickest feller you ever seen, with a big nose and
+dark complected, and his name was Tobias.  The
+other was heavier and blonde complected.  His
+name was Dobbs, he said, and they was the Blanchet
+Brothers.  Doctor Kirby and them got real well
+acquainted in about three minutes.  We drove
+on ahead and got into the town first.
+
+The doctor says that balloon is jest wasted on them
+fellers.  They can't go up in her, not knowing that
+trade, but still they ought to be some way fur them
+to make a little stake out of it before it was sold.
+
+The next evening we run acrost them fellers on the
+street, and they was feeling purty blue.  They
+hadn't been able to sell that team and wagon,
+which it was eating its meals reg'lar in a livery
+stable, and they had been doing stunts in the street
+that day and passing around the hat, but not
+getting enough fur to pay expenses.
+
+"Where's the balloon?" asts the doctor.  And
+I seen he was sicking his intellects onto the job of
+making her pay.
+
+"In the livery stable with the wagon," they tells
+him.
+
+He says he is going to figger out a way to help
+them boys.  They is like all circus performers, he
+says--they jest knows their own acts, and talks
+about 'em all the time, and studies up ways to make
+'em better, and has got no more idea of business
+outside of that than a rabbit.  We all went to the
+livery stable and overhauled that balloon.  It
+was an awful job, too.  But they wasn't a rip in
+her, and the parachute was jest as good as new.
+
+"There's no reason why we can't give a show of
+our own," says Doctor Kirby, "with you boys and
+Danny and me and that balloon.  What we want is a
+lot with a high board fence around it, like a baseball
+grounds, and the chance to tap a gas main."  He
+says he'll be willing to take a chancet on it, even
+paying the gas company real money to fill her up.
+
+What the Doctor didn't know about starting
+shows wasn't worth knowing.  He had even went in
+for the real drama in his younger days now and then.
+
+"One of my theatrical productions came very near
+succeeding, too," he says.
+
+It was a play he says, in which the hero falls in
+love with a pair of Siamese twins and commits suicide
+because he can't make a choice between them.
+
+"We played it as comedy in the big towns and
+tragedy in the little ones," he says.  "But like a fool
+I booked it for two weeks of middle-sized towns and
+it broke us."
+
+The next day he finds a lot that will do jest fine.
+It has been used fur a school playgrounds, but the
+school has been moved and the old building is to
+be tore down.  He hired the place cheap.  And
+he goes and talks the gas company into giving him
+credit to fill that balloon.  Which I kept wondering
+what was the use of filling her, fur none of the four
+of us had ever went up in one.  And when I seen
+the handbills he had had printed I wondered all
+the more.  They read as follers:
+
+
+Kirby's Komedy Kompany
+and Open Air Circus
+
+Presenting a Peerless Personnel
+of Artistic Attractions
+
+Greatest in the Galaxy of Gaiety, is
+
+Hartley L. Kirby
+
+Monologuist and minstrel, dancer and vaudevillian
+in his terpsichorean travesties, buoyant burlesques,
+inimitable imitations, screaming impersonations, refined
+comedy sketches and popular song hits of the day.
+
+
+The Blanchet Brothers
+
+Daring, Dazzling, Danger-Loving, Death-Defying Demons
+
+Joyous jugglers, acrobatic artists, constrictorial contortionists,
+exquisite equilibrists, in their marvellous, mysterious,
+unparalleled performances.
+
+
+Umslopogus
+The Patagonian Chieftain
+
+The lowest type of human intellect
+
+This formerly ferocious fiend has so far succumbed
+to the softer wiles of civilization that he is no longer
+a cannibal, and it is now safe to put him on exhibition.
+But to prevent accidents he is heavily manacled, and the public
+is warned not to come too near.
+
+
+Balloon!  Balloon!!  Balloon!!!
+
+The management also presents the balloon of
+
+Prof. Alonzo Ackerman
+The Famous Aeronaut
+
+in which he has made his
+
+Wonderful Ascension and Parachute Drop
+
+many times, reaching remarkable altitudes
+
+Balloon!  Balloon!!  Balloon!!!
+
+Saturday, 3 P. M.
+Old Vandegrift School Lot
+
+
+Admission 50 Cents
+
+
+
+Well, fur a writer he certainly laid over Looey,
+Doctor Kirby did--more cheerful-like, you might
+say.  I seen right off I was to be the Patagonian
+Chieftain.  I was getting more and more of an
+actor right along--first an Injun, then a wild
+Borneo, and now a Patagonian.
+
+"But who is this Alonzo Ackerman?" I asts him.
+
+"Celebrated balloonist," says he, "and the man
+that invented parachutes.  They eat out of his hand."
+
+"Where is he?" asts I.
+
+"How should I know?" he says.
+
+"How is he going up, then?" I asts.
+
+The doctor chuckles and says it is a good bill,
+a better bill than he thought; that it is getting in
+its work already.  He says to me to read it careful
+and see if it says Alonzo Ackerman is going up.
+Well, it don't.  But any one would of thought so
+the first look.  I reckon that bill was some of a
+liar herself, not lying outright, but jest hinting a
+lie.  They is a lot of mean, stingy-souled kind of
+people wouldn't never lie to help a friend, but
+Doctor Kirby wasn't one of 'em.
+
+"But," I says, "when that crowd finds out
+Alonzo ain't going up they will be purty mad."
+
+"Oh," says he, "I don't think so.  The American
+public are a good-natured set of chuckle-heads,
+mostly.  If they get sore I'll talk 'em out of it."
+
+If he had any faults at all--and mind you, I
+ain't saying Doctor Kirby had any--the one he
+had hardest was the belief he could talk any crowd
+into any notion, or out of it, either.  And he loved
+to do it jest fur the fun of it.  He'd rather have
+the feeling he was doing that than the money any
+day.  He was powerful vain about that gab of
+his'n, Doctor Kirby was.
+
+The four of us took around about five thousand
+bills.  The doctor says they is nothing like giving
+yourself a chancet.  And Saturday morning we
+got the balloon filled up so she showed handsome,
+tugging away there at her ropes.  But we had a
+dern mean time with that balloon, too.
+
+The doctor says if we have good luck there may
+be as many as three, four hundred people.
+
+But Jerusalem!  They was two, three times that
+many.  By the time the show started I reckon they
+was nigh a thousand there.  The doctor and the
+Blanchet Brothers was tickled.  When they quit
+coming fast the doctor left the gate and made a
+little speech, telling all about the wonderful show,
+and the great expense it was to get it together, and
+all that.
+
+They was a rope stretched between the crowd
+and us.  Back of that was the Blanchet Brothers'
+wagon and our wagon, and our little tent.  I was
+jest inside the tent with chains on.  Back of every-
+thing else was the balloon.
+
+Well, the doctor he done a lot of songs and things
+as advertised.  Then the Blanchet Brothers done
+some of their acts.  They was really fine acts, too.
+Then come some more of Doctor Kirby's refined
+comedy, as advertised.  Next, more Blanchet.
+Then a lecture about me by the doctor.  All in all
+it takes up about an hour and a half.  Then the
+doctor makes a mighty nice little talk, and wishes
+them all good afternoon, thanking them fur their
+kind intentions and liberal patronage, one and all.
+
+"But when will the balloon go up?" asts half
+a dozen at oncet.
+
+"The balloon?" asts Doctor Kirby, surprised.
+
+"Balloon!  Balloon!" yells a kid.  And the hull
+crowd took it up and yelled: "Balloon!  Balloon!
+Balloon!"  And they crowded up closte to that
+rope.
+
+Doctor Kirby has been getting off the wagon,
+but he gets back on her, and stretches his arms
+wide, and motions of 'em all to come close.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, "please to
+gather near--up here, good people--and listen!
+Listen to what I have to say--harken to the utter-
+ings of my voice!  There has been a misunder-
+standing here!  There has been a misconstruction!
+There has been, ladies and gentlemen, a woeful
+lack of comprehension here!"
+
+It looked to me like they was beginning to under-
+stand more than he meant them to.  I was wonder-
+ing how it would all come out, but he never lost
+his nerve.
+
+"Listen," he says, very earnest, "listen to me.
+Somehow the idea seems to have gone forth that
+there would be a balloon ascension here this after-
+noon.  How, I do not know, for what we advertised,
+ladies and gentlemen, was that the balloon used by
+Prof. Alonzo Ackerman, the illustrious aeronaut,
+would be UPON EXHIBITION.  And there she is, ladies
+and gentlemen, there she is, for every eye to see
+and gladden with the sight of--right before you,
+ladies and gentlemen--the balloon of Alonzo
+Ackerman, the wonderful voyager of the air,
+exactly as represented.  During their long career
+Kirby and Company have never deceived the pub-
+lic.  Others may, but Kirby and Company are
+like Caesar's wife--Kirby and Company are above
+suspicion.  It is the province of Kirby's Komedy
+Kompany, ladies and gentlemen, to spread the
+glad tidings of innocent amusement throughout
+the length and breadth of this fair land of ours.
+And there she is before you, the balloon as adver-
+tised, the gallant ship of the air in which the illus-
+trious Ackerman made so many voyages before
+he sailed at last into the Great Beyond!  You can
+see her, ladies and gentlemen, straining at her cords,
+anxious to mount into the heavens and be gone!
+It is an education in itself, ladies and gentlemen,
+a moral education, and well worth coming miles
+to see.  Think of it--think of it--the Acker-
+man balloon--and then think that the illustrious
+Ackerman himself--he was my personal friend,
+ladies and gentlemen, and a true friend sticketh
+closer than a brother--the illustrious Ackerman
+is dead.  The balloon, ladies and gentlemen, is
+there, but Ackerman is gone to his reward.  Look
+at that balloon, ladies and gentlemen, and tell me
+if you can, why should the spirit of mortals be
+proud?  For the man that rode her like a master
+and tamed her like she was a dove lies cold and
+dead in a western graveyard, ladies and gentlemen,
+and she is here, a useless and an idle vanity without
+the mind that made her go!"
+
+Well, he went on and he told a funny story about
+Alonzo, which I don't believe they ever was no
+Alonzo Ackerman, and a lot of 'em laughed; and
+he told a pitiful story, and they got sollum agin,
+and then another funny story.  Well, he had 'em
+listening, and purty soon most of the crowd is
+feeling in a good humour toward him, and one
+feller yells out:
+
+"Go it--you're a hull show yourself!"  And
+some joshes him, but they don't seem to be no trouble
+in the air.  When they all look to be in a good
+humour he holds up a bill and asts how many has
+them.  Many has.  He says that is well, and then
+he starts to telling another story.  But in the
+middle of the story that hull dern crowd is took
+with a fit of laughing.  They has looked at the
+bill closet, and seen they is sold, and is taking it
+good-natured.  And still shouting and laughing
+most of them begins to start along off.  And I
+thought all chancet of trouble was over with.
+But it wasn't.
+
+Fur they is always a natcheral born kicker
+everywhere, and they was one here, too.
+
+He was a lean feller with a sticking out jaw, and
+one of his eyes was in a kind of a black pocket, and
+he was jest natcherally laying it off to about a
+dozen fellers that was in a little knot around him.
+
+The doctor sees the main part of the crowd
+going and climbs down off'n the wagon.  As he
+does so that hull bunch of about a dozen moves
+in under the rope, and some more that was going
+out seen it, and stopped and come back.
+
+"Perfessor," says the man with the patch over
+his eye to Doctor Kirby, "you say this man Acker-
+man is dead?"
+
+"Yes," says the doctor, eying him over, "he's
+dead."
+
+"How did he die?" asts the feller.
+
+"He died hard, I understand," says the doctor,
+careless-like.
+
+"Fell out of his balloon?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"This aeronaut trade is a dangerous trade,
+I hear," says the feller with the patch on his
+eye.
+
+"They say so," says Doctor Kirby, easy-like.
+
+"Was you ever an aeronaut yourself?" asts the
+feller.
+
+"No," says the doctor.
+
+"Never been up in a balloon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, you're going up in one this afternoon!"
+
+"What do you mean?" asts Doctor Kirby.
+
+"We've come out to see a balloon ascension--
+and we're going to see it, too."
+
+And with that the hull crowd made a rush at
+the doctor.
+
+Well, I been in fights before that, and I been in
+fights since then.  But I never been in no harder
+one.  The doctor and the two Blanchet brothers
+and me managed to get backed up agin the fence
+in a row when the rush come.  I guess I done my
+share, and I guess the Blanchet brothers done theirn,
+too.  But they was too many of 'em for us--too
+dern many.  It wouldn't of ended as quick as it
+did if Doctor Kirby hadn't gone clean crazy.
+His back was to the fence, and he cleaned out
+everything in front of him, and then he give a wild
+roar jest like a bull and rushed that hull gang--
+twenty men, they was--with his head down.
+He caught two fellers, one in each hand, and he
+cracked their heads together, and he caught two
+more, and done the same.  But he orter never
+took his back away from that fence.  The hull
+gang closed in on him, and down he went at the
+bottom of a pile.  I was awful busy myself, but
+I seen that pile moving and churning.  Then I
+made a big mistake myself.  I kicked a feller in
+the stomach, and another feller caught my leg,
+and down I went.  Fur a half a minute I never
+knowed nothing.  And when I come to I was all
+mashed about the face, and two fellers was sitting
+on me.
+
+The crowd was tying Doctor Kirby to that
+parachute.  They straddled legs over the parachute
+bar, and tied his feet below it.  He was still fight-
+ing, but they was too many fur him.  They left
+his arms untied, but they held 'em, and then--
+
+Then they cut her loose.  She went up like she
+was shot from a gun, and as she did Doctor Kirby
+took a grip on a feller's arm that hadn't let loose
+quick enough and lifted him plumb off'n the ground.
+He slewed around on the trapeze bar with the
+feller's weight, and slipped head downward.  And
+as he slipped he give that feller a swing and let
+loose of him, and then ketched himself by the
+crook of one knee.  The feller turned over twicet
+in the air and landed in a little crumpled-up pile
+on the ground, and never made a sound.
+
+The fellers that had holt of me forgot me and
+stood up, and I stood up too, and looked.  The
+balloon was rising fast.  Doctor Kirby was trying
+to pull himself up to the trapeze bar, twisting and
+squirming and having a hard time of it, and shoot-
+ing higher every second.  I reckoned he couldn't
+fall complete, fur where his feet was tied would
+likely hold even if his knee come straight--but
+he would die mebby with his head filling up with
+blood.  But finally he made a squirm and raised
+himself a lot and grabbed the rope at one side of
+the bar.  And then he reached and got the rope
+on the other side, and set straddle of her.  And
+jest as he done that the wind ketched the balloon
+good and hard, and she turned out toward Lake
+Erie.  It was too late fur him to pull the rope
+that sets the parachute loose then, and drop onto
+the land.
+
+I rushed out of that schoolhouse yard and down
+the street toward the lake front, and run, stumbling
+along and looking up.  She was getting smaller
+every minute.  And with my head in the air look-
+ing up I was running plumb to the edge of the
+water before I knowed it.
+
+She was away out over the lake now, and awful
+high, and going fast before the wind, and the doctor
+was only a speck.  And as I stared at that speck
+away up in the sky I thought this was a mean world
+to live in.  Fur there was the only real friend I
+ever had, and no way fur me to help him.  He had
+learnt me to read, and bought me good clothes,
+and made me know they was things in the world
+worth travelling around to see, and made me feel
+like I was something more than jest Old Hank
+Walters's dog.  And I guessed he would be drownded
+and I would never see him agin now.  And all of
+a sudden something busted loose inside of me,
+and I sunk down there at the edge of the water,
+sick at my stomach, and weak and shivering.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+I didn't exactly faint there, but things got
+all mixed fur me, and when they was
+straightened out agin I was in a hospital.
+It seems I had been considerable stepped on in
+that fight, and three ribs was broke.  I knowed
+I was hurting, but I was so interested in what was
+happening to the doctor the hull hurt never come
+to me till the balloon was way out over the lake.
+
+But now I was in a plaster cast, and before I
+got out of that I was in a fever.  I was some weeks
+getting out of there.
+
+I tried to get some word of Doctor Kirby, but
+couldn't.  Nothing had been heard of him or the
+balloon.  The newspapers had had stuff about it
+fur a day or two, and they guessed the body might
+come to light sometime.  But that was all.  And
+I didn't know where to hunt nor how.
+
+The hosses and wagon and tent and things worried
+me some, too.  They wasn't mine, and so I couldn't
+sell 'em.  And they wasn't no good to me without
+Doctor Kirby.  So I tells the man that owns the
+livery stable to use the team fur its board and keep
+it till Doctor Kirby calls fur it, and if he never does
+mebby I will sometime.
+
+I didn't want to stay in that town or I could of
+got a job in the livery stable.  They offered me
+one, but I hated that town.  I wanted to light out.
+I didn't much care where to.
+
+Them Blanchet Brothers had left a good share of
+the money we took in at the balloon ascension with
+the hospital people fur me before they cleared out.
+But before I left that there town I seen they was
+one thing I had to do to make myself easy in my
+mind.  So I done her.
+
+That was to hunt up that feller with his eye in
+the patch.  It took me a week to find him.  He
+lived down near some railroad yards.  I might of
+soaked him with a coupling link and felt a hull lot
+better.  But I didn't guess it would do to pet and
+pamper my feelings too much.  So I does it with
+my fists in a quiet place, and does it very complete,
+and leaves that town in a cattle car, feeling a hull
+lot more contented in my mind.
+
+Then they was a hull dern year I didn't stay
+nowhere very long, nor work at any one job too
+long, neither.  I jest worked from place to place
+seeing things--big towns and rivers and moun-
+tains.  Working here and there, and loafing and
+riding blind baggages and freight trains between
+jobs, I covered a lot of ground that year, and made
+some purty big jumps, and got acquainted with
+some awful queer folks, first and last.
+
+But the worst of that is lots of people gets to
+thinking I am a hobo.  Even one or two judges
+in police courts I got acquainted with had that
+there idea of me.  I always explains that I am not
+one, and am jest travelling around to see things,
+and working when I feels like it, and ain't no bum.
+But frequent I am not believed.  And two, three
+different times I gets to the place where I couldn't
+hardly of told myself from a hobo, if I hadn't of
+knowed I wasn't one.
+
+I got right well acquainted with some of them
+hobos, too.  As fur as I can see, they is as much
+difference in them as in other humans.  Some
+travels because they likes to see things, and some
+because they hates to work, and some because
+they is in the habit and can't stop it.  Well, I
+know myself it's purty hard after while to stop it,
+fur where would you stop at?  What excuse is
+they to stop one place more'n another?  I met all
+kinds of 'em, and oncet I got in fur a week with a
+couple of real Johnny Yeggs that is both in the
+pen now.  I hearn a feller say one time there is
+some good in every man.  I went the same way as
+them two yeggmen a hull dern week to try and
+find out where the good in 'em was.  I guess they
+must be some mistake somewheres, fur I looked
+hard and I watched closet and I never found it.
+They is many kinds of hobos and tramps, per-
+fessional and amachure, and lots of kinds of bums,
+and lots of young fellers working their way around
+to see things, like I was, and lots of working men in
+hard luck going from place to place, and all them
+kinds is humans.  But the real yeggman ain't
+even a dog.
+
+And oncet I went all the way from Chicago to
+Baltimore with a serious, dern fool that said he was
+a soshyologest, whatever them is, and was going
+to put her all into a book about the criminal classes.
+He worked hard trying to get at the reason I was
+a hobo.  Which they wasn't no reason, fur I wasn't
+no hobo.  But I didn't want to disappoint that
+feller and spoil his book fur him.  So I tells him
+things.  Things not overly truthful, but very
+full of crime.  About a year afterward I was into
+one of these here Andrew Carnegie lib'aries with
+the names of the old-time presidents all chiselled
+along the top and I seen the hull dern thing in print.
+He said of me the same thing I have said about
+them yeggmen.  If all he met joshed that feller
+the same as me, that book must of been what you
+might call misleading in spots.
+
+One morning I woke up in a good-sized town in
+Illinoise, not a hundred miles from where I was
+raised, without no money, and my clothes not much
+to look at, and no job.  I had been with a railroad
+show fur about two weeks, driving stakes and other
+rough work, and it had went off and left me sleeping
+on the ground.  circuses never waits fur nothing
+nor cares a dern fur no one.  I tried all day
+around town fur to get some kind of a job.
+But I was looking purty rough and I couldn't
+land nothing.  Along in the afternoon I was awful
+hungry.
+
+I was feeling purty low down to have to ast fur
+a meal, but finally I done it.
+
+I dunno how I ever come to pick out such a swell-
+looking house, but I makes a little talk at the back
+door and the Irish girl she says, "Come in," and
+into the kitchen I goes.
+
+"It's Minnesota you're working toward?" asts
+she, pouring me out a cup of coffee.
+
+She is thinking of the wheat harvest where they
+is thousands makes fur every fall.  But none of
+'em fur me.  That there country is full of them
+Scandiluvian Swedes and Norwegians, and they
+gets into the field before daylight and stays there
+so long the hired man's got to milk the cows by
+moonlight.
+
+"I been acrost the river into I'way," I says,
+"a-working at my trade, and now I'm going back
+to Chicago to work at it some more."
+
+"What might your trade be?" she asts, sizing
+me up careful; and I thinks I'll hand her one to
+chew on she ain't never hearn tell of before.
+
+"I'm a agnostic by trade," I says.  I spotted
+that there word in a religious book one time, and
+that's the first chancet I ever has to try it on any one.
+You can't never tell what them reg'lar sockdologers
+is going to do till you tries them.
+
+"I see," says she.  But I seen she didn't see.
+And I didn't help her none.  She would of ruther
+died than to let on she didn't see.  The Irish is
+like that.  Purty soon she says:
+
+"Ain't that the dangerous kind o' work, though!"
+
+"It is," I says.  And says nothing further.
+
+She sets down and folds her arms, like she was
+thinking of it, watching my hands closet all the
+time I was eating, like she's looking fur scars where
+something slipped when I done that agnostic work.
+Purty soon she says:
+
+"Me brother Michael was kilt at it in the old
+country.  He was the most vinturesome lad of
+thim all!"
+
+"Did it fly up and hit him?" I asts her.  I
+was wondering w'ether she is making fun of me or
+am I making fun of her.  Them Irish is like that,
+you can never tell which.
+
+"No," says she, "he fell off of it.  And I'm think-
+ing you don't know what it is yourself."  And the
+next thing I know I'm eased out o' the back door
+and she's grinning at me scornful through the
+crack of it.
+
+So I was walking slow around toward the front
+of the house thinking how the Irish was a great
+nation, and what shall I do now, anyhow?  And
+I says to myself: "Danny, you was a fool to let
+that circus walk off and leave you asleep in this
+here town with nothing over you but a barbed wire
+fence this morning.  Fur what ARE you going to do
+next?  First thing you know, you WILL be a reg'lar
+tramp, which some folks can't be made to see you
+ain't now."  And jest when I was thinking that, a
+feller comes down the front steps of that house on
+the jump and nabs me by the coat collar.
+
+"Did you come out of this house?" he
+asts.
+
+"I did," I says, wondering what next.
+
+"Back in you go, then," he says, marching me
+forward toward them front steps, "they've got
+smallpox in there."
+
+I like to of jumped loose when he says that.
+
+"Smallpox ain't no inducement to me, mister,"
+I tells him.  But he twisted my coat collar tight
+and dug his thumbs into my neck, all the time
+helping me onward with his knee from behind,
+and I seen they wasn't no use pulling back.  I
+could probable of licked that man, but they's
+no system in mixing up with them well-dressed men
+in towns where they think you are a tramp.  The
+judge will give you the worst of it.
+
+He rung the door bell and the girl that opened
+the door she looked kind o' surprised when she
+seen me, and in we went.
+
+"Tell Professor Booth that Doctor Wilkins
+wants to see him again," says the man a-holt o'
+me, not letting loose none.  And we says nothing
+further till the perfessor comes, which he does,
+slow and absent-minded.  When he seen me he
+took off his glasses so's he could see me better, and
+he says:
+
+"What is that you have there, Doctor
+Wilkins?"
+
+"A guest for you," says Doctor Wilkins, grinning
+all over hisself.  "I found him leaving your house.
+And you being under quarantine, and me being
+secretary to the board of health, and the city
+pest-house being crowded too full already, I'll
+have to ask you to keep him here till we get Miss
+Margery onto her feet again," he says.  Or they
+was words to that effect, as the lawyers asts you.
+
+"Dear me," says Perfesser Booth, kind o' help-
+less like.  And he comes over closet to me and looks
+me all over like I was one of them amphimissourian
+lizards in a free museum.  And then he goes to
+the foot of the stairs and sings out in a voice that
+was so bleached-out and flat-chested it would of
+looked jest like him himself if you could of saw it--
+"Estelle," he sings out, "oh, Estelle!"
+
+Estelle, she come down stairs looking like she was
+the perfessor's big brother.  I found out later she
+was his old maid sister.  She wasn't no spring
+chicken, Estelle wasn't, and they was a continuous
+grin on her face.  I figgered it must of froze there
+years and years ago.  They was a kid about ten
+or eleven years old come along down with her,
+that had hair down to its shoulders and didn't
+look like it knowed whether it was a girl or a boy.
+Miss Estelle, she looks me over in a way that makes
+me shiver, while the doctor and the perfessor jaws
+about whose fault it is the smallpox sign ain't been
+hung out.  And when she was done listening she
+says to the perfessor: "You had better go back
+to your laboratory."  And the perfessor he went
+along out, and the doctor with him.
+
+"What are you going to do with him, Aunt
+Estelle?" the kid asts her.
+
+"What would YOU suggest, William, Dear?" asts
+his aunt.  I ain't feeling very comfortable, and I
+was getting all ready jest to natcherally bolt out
+the front door now the doctor was gone.  Then I
+thinks it mightn't be no bad place to stay in fur a
+couple o' days, even risking the smallpox.  Fur
+I had riccolected I couldn't ketch it nohow, having
+been vaccinated a few months before in Terry
+Hutt by compulsive medical advice, me being fur
+a while doing some work on the city pavements
+through a mistake about me in the police court.
+
+William Dear looks at me like it was the day of
+judgment and his job was to keep the fatted calves
+separate from the goats and prodigals, and he says:
+
+"If I were you, Aunt Estelle, the first thing would
+be to get his hair cut and his face washed and then
+get him some clothes."
+
+"William Dear is my friend," thinks I.
+
+She calls James, which was a butler.  James,
+he buttles me into a bathroom the like o' which
+I never seen afore, and then he buttles me into a
+suit o' somebody's clothes and into a room at the
+top o' the house next to his'n, and then he comes
+back and buttles a comb and brush at me.  James
+was the most mournful-looking fat man I ever
+seen, and he says that account of me not being
+respectable I will have my meals alone in the kitchen
+after the servants has eat.
+
+The first thing I knowed I been in that house
+more'n a week.  I eat and I slept and I smoked
+and I kind of enjoyed not worrying about things
+fur a while.  The only oncomfortable thing about
+being the perfessor's guest was Miss Estelle.  Soon's
+she found out I was a agnostic she took charge o'
+my intellectuals and what went into 'em, and she
+makes me read things and asts me about 'em, and
+she says she is going fur to reform me.  And what-
+ever brand o' disgrace them there agnostics really
+is I ain't found out to this day, having come acrost
+the word accidental.
+
+Biddy Malone, which was the kitchen mechanic,
+she says the perfessor's wife's been over to her
+mother's while this smallpox has been going on,
+and they is a nurse in the house looking after Miss
+Margery, the little kid that's sick.  And Biddy,
+she says if she was Mrs. Booth she'd stay there,
+too.  They's been some talk, anyhow, about Mrs.
+Booth and a musician feller around that there
+town.  But Biddy, she likes Mrs. Booth, and even
+if it was true, which it ain't Biddy says, who could
+of blamed her?  Fur things ain't joyous around
+that house the last year, since Miss Estelle's come
+there to live.  The perfessor, he's so full of scien-
+tifics he don't know nothing with no sense to it,
+Biddy says.  He's got more money'n you can shake
+a stick at, and he don't have to do no work, nor
+never has, and his scientifics gets worse and worse
+every year.  But while scientifics is worrying to
+the nerves of a fambly, and while his labertory
+often makes the house smell like a sick drug store
+has crawled into it and died there, they wouldn't
+of been no serious row on between the perfessor
+and his wife, not ALL the time, if it hadn't of been
+fur Miss Estelle.  She has jest natcherally made
+herself boss of that there house, Biddy says, and
+she's a she-devil.  Between all them scientifics
+and Miss Estelle things has got where Mrs. Booth
+can't stand 'em much longer.
+
+I didn't blame her none fur getting sore on her
+job, neither.  You can't expect a woman that's
+purty, and knows it, and ain't no more'n thirty-two
+or three, and don't look it, to be serious intrusted
+in mummies and pickled snakes and chemical
+perfusions, not ALL the time.  Mebby when Mrs.
+Booth would ast him if he was going to take her
+to the opery that night the perfessor would look
+up in an absent-minded sort of way and ast her
+did she know them Germans had invented a new
+germ?  It wouldn't of been so bad if the perfessor
+had picked out jest one brand of scientifics and
+stuck to that reg'lar.  Mrs. Booth could of got
+use to any ONE kind.  But mebby this week the
+perfessor would be took hard with ornithography
+and he'd go chasing humming-birds all over the
+front yard, and the next he'd be putting gastronomy
+into William's breakfast feed.
+
+They was always a row on over them kids, which
+they hadn't been till Miss Estelle come.  Mrs.
+Booth, she said they could kill their own selves,
+if they wanted to, him and Miss Estelle, but she
+had more right than any one else to say what went
+into William's and Margery's digestive ornaments,
+and she didn't want 'em brung up scientific nohow,
+but jest human.  But Miss Estelle's got so she
+runs that hull house now, and the perfessor too,
+but he don't know it, Biddy says, and her a-saying
+every now and then it was too bad Frederick couldn't
+of married a noble woman who would of took a
+serious intrust in his work.  The kids don't hardly
+dare to kiss their ma in front of Miss Estelle no
+more, on account of germs and things.  And with
+Miss Estelle taking care of their religious organs and
+their intellectuals and the things like that, and the
+perfessor filling them up on new invented feeds, I
+guess they never was two kids got more education
+to the square inch, outside and in.  It hadn't
+worked none on Miss Margery yet, her being
+younger, but William Dear he took it hard and
+serious, and it made bumps all over his head, and
+he was kind o' pale and spindly.  Every time
+that kid cut his finger he jest natcherally bled
+scientifics.  One day I says to Miss Estelle,
+says I:
+
+"It looks to me like William Dear is kind of
+peaked."  She looks worried and she looks mad
+fur me lipping in, and then she says mebby it is
+true, but she don't see why, because he is being
+brung up like he orter be in every way and no ex-
+pense nor trouble spared.
+
+"Well," says I, "what a kid about that size
+wants to do is to get out and roll around in the dirt
+some, and yell and holler."
+
+She sniffs like I wasn't worth taking no notice
+of.  But it kind o' soaked in, too.  She and the
+perfessor must of talked it over.  Fur the next
+day I seen her spreading a oilcloth on the hall
+floor.  And then James comes a buttling in with
+a lot of sand what the perfessor has baked and
+made all scientific down in his labertory.  James,
+he pours all that nice, clean dirt onto the oilcloth
+and then Miss Estelle sends fur William Dear.
+
+"William Dear," she says, "we have decided,
+your papa and I, that what you need is more romp-
+ing around and playing along with your studies.
+You ought to get closer to the soil and to nature,
+as is more healthy for a youth of your age.  So for
+an hour each day, between your studies, you will
+romp and play in this sand.  You may begin to
+frolic now, William Dear, and then James will
+sweep up the dirt again for to-morrow's frolic."
+
+But William didn't frolic none.  He jest looked
+at that dirt in a sad kind o' way, and he says very
+serious but very decided:
+
+"Aunt Estelle, I shall NOT frolic."  And they had
+to let it go at that, fur he never would frolic none,
+neither.  And all that nice clean dirt was throwed
+out in the back yard along with the unscientific
+dirt.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+One night when I've been there more'n a
+week, and am getting kind o' tired staying
+in one place so long, I don't want to go to
+bed after I eats, and I gets a-holt of some of the
+perfessor's cigars and goes into the lib'ary to see
+if he's got anything fit to read.  Setting there
+thinking of the awful remarkable people they is
+in this world I must of went to sleep.  Purty soon,
+in my sleep, I hearn two voices.  Then I waked
+up sudden, and still hearn 'em, low and quick-
+like, in the room that opens right off of the lib'ary
+with a couple of them sliding doors like is onto a
+box car.  One voice was a woman's voice, and it
+wasn't Miss Estelle's.
+
+"But I MUST see them before we go, Henry,"
+she says.
+
+And the other was a man's voice and it wasn't
+no one around our house.
+
+"But, my God," he says, "suppose you get it
+yourself, Jane!"
+
+I set up straight then, fur Jane was the perfessor's
+wife's first name.
+
+"You mean suppose YOU get it," she says.  I
+like to of seen the look she must of give him to
+fit in with the way she says that YOU.  He didn't
+say nothing, the man didn't; and then her voice
+softens down some, and she says, low and slow:
+"Henry, wouldn't you love me if I DID get it?
+Suppose it marked and pitted me all up?"
+
+"Oh, of course," he says, "of course I would.
+Nothing can change the way I feel.  YOU know
+that."  He said it quick enough, all right, jest the
+way they does in a show, but it sounded TOO MUCH
+like it does on the stage to of suited me if _I_'D been
+her.  I seen folks overdo them little talks before
+this.
+
+I listens some more, and then I sees how it is.
+This is that musician feller Biddy Malone's been
+talking about.  Jane's going to run off with him
+all right, but she's got to kiss the kids first.  Women
+is like that.  They may hate the kids' pa all
+right, but they's dad-burned few of 'em don't like
+the kids.  I thinks to myself: "It must be late.
+I bet they was already started, or ready to start,
+and she made him bring her here first so's she could
+sneak in and see the kids.  She jest simply couldn't
+get by.  But she's taking a fool risk, too.  Fur
+how's she going to see Margery with that nurse
+coming and going and hanging around all night?
+And even if she tries jest to see William Dear it's
+a ten to one shot he'll wake up and she'll be ketched
+at it."
+
+And then I thinks, suppose she IS ketched at it?
+What of it?  Ain't a woman got a right to come into
+her own house with her own door key, even if they
+is a quarantine onto it, and see her kids?  And
+if she is ketched seeing them, how would any one
+know she was going to run off?  And ain't she got
+a right to have a friend of hern and her husband's
+bring her over from her mother's house, even if it
+is a little late?
+
+Then I seen she wasn't taking no great risks
+neither, and I thinks mebby I better go and tell
+that perfessor what is going on, fur he has treated
+me purty white.  And then I thinks: "I'll be
+gosh-derned if I meddle.  So fur as I can see that
+there perfessor ain't getting fur from what's coming
+to him, nohow.  And as fur HER, you got to let
+some people find out what they want fur their-
+selves.  Anyhow, where do _I_ come in at?"
+
+But I want to get a look at her and Henry,
+anyhow.  So I eases off my shoes, careful-like, and
+I eases acrost the floor to them sliding doors, and
+I puts my eye down to the little crack.  The talk
+is going backward and forward between them two,
+him wanting her to come away quick, and her
+undecided whether to risk seeing the kids.  And
+all the time she's kind o' hoping mebby she will
+be ketched if she tries to see the kids, and she's
+begging off fur more time ginerally.
+
+Well, sir, I didn't blame that musician feller none
+when I seen her.  She was a peach.
+
+And I couldn't blame her so much, neither, when
+I thought of Miss Estelle and all them scientifics of
+the perfessor's strung out fur years and years world
+without end.
+
+Yet, when I seen the man, I sort o' wished she
+wouldn't.  I seen right off that Henry wouldn't
+do.  It takes a man with a lot of gumption to keep
+a woman feeling good and not sorry fur doing it
+when he's married to her.  But it takes a man
+with twicet as much to make her feel right when
+they ain't married.  This feller wears one of them
+little, brown, pointed beards fur to hide where
+his chin ain't.  And his eyes is too much like a
+woman's.  Which is the kind that gets the biggest
+piece of pie at the lunch counter and fergits to
+thank the girl as cuts it big.  She was setting in
+front of a table, twisting her fingers together, and
+he was walking up and down.  I seen he was mad
+and trying not to show it, and I seen he was scared
+of the smallpox and trying not to show that, too.
+And jest about that time something happened that
+kind o' jolted me.
+
+They was one of them big chairs in the room
+where they was that has got a high back and spins
+around on itself.  It was right acrost from me, on
+the other side of the room, and it was facing the
+front window, which was a bow window.  And
+that there chair begins to turn, slow and easy.
+First I thought she wasn't turning.  Then I seen
+she was.  But Jane and Henry didn't.  They was
+all took up with each other in the middle of the
+room, with their backs to it.
+
+Henry is a-begging of Jane, and she turns a little
+more, that chair does.  Will she squeak, I
+wonders?
+
+"Don't you be a fool, Jane," says the Henry
+feller.
+
+Around she comes three hull inches, that there
+chair, and nary a squeak.
+
+"A fool?" asts Jane, and laughs.  "And I'm
+not a fool to think of going with you at
+all, then?"
+
+That chair, she moved six inches more and I
+seen the calf of a leg and part of a crumpled-up
+coat tail.
+
+"But I AM going with you, Henry," says Jane.
+And she gets up jest like she is going to put her
+arms around him.
+
+But Jane don't.  Fur that chair swings clear
+around and there sets the perfessor.  He's all
+hunched up and caved in and he's rubbing his
+eyes like he's jest woke up recent, and he's got a
+grin onto his face that makes him look like his
+sister Estelle looks all the time.
+
+"Excuse me," says the perfessor.
+
+They both swings around and faces him.  I can
+hear my heart bumping.  Jane never says a word.
+The man with the brown beard never says a word.
+But if they felt like me they both felt like laying
+right down there and having a fit.  They looks at
+him and he jest sets there and grins at them.
+
+But after a while Jane, she says:
+
+"Well, now you KNOW!  What are you going to
+do about it?"
+
+Henry, he starts to say something too.  But--
+
+"Don't start anything," says the perfessor to
+him.  "YOU aren't going to do anything."  Or
+they was words to that effect.
+
+"Professor Booth," he says, seeing he has got
+to say something or else Jane will think the worse
+of him, "I am--"
+
+"Keep still," says the perfessor, real quiet.  "I'll
+tend to you in a minute or two.  YOU don't count
+for much.  This thing is mostly between me and
+my wife."
+
+When he talks so decided I thinks mebby that
+perfessor has got something into him besides
+science after all.  Jane, she looks kind o' surprised
+herself.  But she says nothing, except:
+
+"What are you going to do, Frederick?"  And
+she laughs one of them mean kind of laughs, and
+looks at Henry like she wanted him to spunk up a
+little more, and says: "What CAN you do, Fred-
+erick?"
+
+Frederick, he says, not excited a bit:
+
+"There's quite a number of things I COULD do
+that would look bad when they got into the news-
+papers.  But it's none of them, unless one of you
+forces me to it."  Then he says:
+
+"You DID want to see the children, Jane?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Jane," he says, "can't you see I'm the better
+man?"
+
+The perfessor, he was woke up after all them
+years of scientifics, and he didn't want to see her
+go.  "Look at him," he says, pointing to the feller
+with the brown beard, "he's scared stiff right now."
+
+Which I would of been scared myself if I'd a-been
+ketched that-a-way like Henry was, and the per-
+fessor's voice sounding like you was chopping
+ice every time he spoke.  I seen the perfessor
+didn't want to have no blood on the carpet without
+he had to have it, but I seen he was making up his
+mind about something, too.  Jane, she says:
+
+"YOU a better man?  YOU?  You think you've
+been a model husband just because you've never
+beaten me, don't you?"
+
+"No," says the perfessor, "I've been a blamed
+fool all right.  I've been a worse fool, maybe,
+than if I HAD beaten you."  Then he turns to
+Henry and he says:
+
+"Duels are out of fashion, aren't they?  And a
+plain killing looks bad in the papers, doesn't it?
+Well, you just wait for me."  With which he gets
+up and trots out, and I hearn him running down
+stairs to his labertory.
+
+Henry, he'd ruther go now.  He don't want to
+wait.  But with Jane a-looking at him he's shamed
+not to wait.  It's his place to make some kind of a
+strong action now to show Jane he is a great man.
+But he don't do it.  And Jane is too much of a
+thoroughbred to show him she expects it.  And me,
+I'm getting the fidgets and wondering to myself,
+"What is that there perfessor up to now?  What-
+ever it is, it ain't like no one else.  He is looney,
+that perfessor is.  And she is kind o' looney, too.
+I wonder if they is any one that ain't looney some-
+times?"  I been around the country a good 'eal,
+too, and seen and hearn of some awful remarkable
+things, and I never seen no one that wasn't more or
+less looney when the SEARCH US THE FEMM comes into
+the case.  Which is a Dago word I got out'n a
+newspaper and it means: "Who was the dead
+gent's lady friend?"  And we all set and sweat
+and got the fidgets waiting fur that perfessor to
+come back.
+
+Which he done with that Sister Estelle grin onto
+his face and a pill box in his hand.  They
+was two pills in the box.  He says, placid and
+chilly:
+
+"Yes, sir, duels are out of fashion.  This is the
+age of science.  All the same, the one that gets
+her has got to fight for her.  If she isn't worth
+fighting for, she isn't worth having.  Here are
+two pills.  I made 'em myself.  One has enough
+poison in it to kill a regiment when it gets to working
+well--which it does fifteen minutes after it is
+taken.  The other one has got nothing harmful
+in it.  If you get the poison one, I keep her.  If I
+get it, you can have her.  Only I hope you will
+wait long enough after I'm dead so there won't
+be any scandal around town."
+
+Henry, he never said a word.  He opened his
+mouth, but nothing come of it.  When he done
+that I thought I hearn his tongue scrape agin his
+cheek on the inside like a piece of sand-paper.
+He was scared, Henry was.
+
+"But YOU know which is which," Jane sings out.
+"The thing's not fair!"
+
+"That is the reason my dear Jane is going to
+shuffle these pills around each other herself," says
+the perfessor, "and then pick out one for him and
+one for me.  YOU don't know which is which,
+Jane.  And as he is the favourite, he is going to
+get the first chance.  If he gets the one I want
+him to get, he will have just fifteen minutes to live
+after taking it.  In that fifteen minutes he will
+please to walk so far from my house that he won't
+die near it and make a scandal.  I won't have a
+scandal without I have to.  Everything is going
+to be nice and quiet and respectable.  The effect
+of the poison is similar to heart failure.  No one
+can tell the difference on the corpse.  There's
+going to be no blood anywhere.  I will be found
+dead in my house in the morning with heart failure,
+or else he will be picked up dead in the street, far
+enough away so as to make no talk."  Or they was
+words to that effect.
+
+He is rubbing it in considerable, I thinks, that
+perfessor is.  I wonder if I better jump in and stop
+the hull thing.  Then I thinks: "No, it's between
+them three."  Besides, I want to see which one is
+going to get that there loaded pill.  I always been
+intrusted in games of chancet of all kinds, and
+when I seen the perfessor was such a sport, I'm
+sorry I been misjudging him all this time.
+
+Jane, she looks at the box, and she breathes hard
+and quick.
+
+"I won't touch 'em," she says.  "I refuse to be
+a party to any murder of that kind."
+
+"Huh?  You do?" says the perfessor.  "But
+the time when you might have refused has gone by.
+You have made yourself a party to it already.
+You're really the MAIN party to it.
+
+"But do as you like," he goes on.  "I'm giving
+him more chance than I ought to with those pills.
+I might shoot him, and I would, and then face the
+music, if it wasn't for mixing the children up in
+the scandal, Jane.  If you want to see him get a
+fair chance, Jane, you've got to hand out these
+pills, one to him and then one to me.  YOU must
+kill one or the other of us, or else _I_'LL kill HIM the
+other way.  And YOU had better pick one out for
+him, because _I_ know which is which.  Or else let
+him pick one out for himself," he says.
+
+Henry, he wasn't saying nothing.  I thought
+he had fainted.  But he hadn't.  I seen him licking
+his lips.  I bet Henry's mouth was all dry inside.
+
+Jane, she took the box and she went round in
+front of Henry and she looked at him hard.  She
+looked at him like she was thinking: "Fur God's
+sake, spunk up some, and take one if it DOES kill
+you!"  Then she says out loud: "Henry, if you
+die I will die, too!"
+
+And Henry, he took one.  His hand shook, but
+he took it out'n the box.  If she had of looked like
+that at me mebby I would of took one myself.
+Fur Jane, she was a peach, she was.  But I don't
+know whether I would of or not.  When she makes
+that brag about dying, I looked at the perfessor.
+What she said never fazed him.  And I thinks agin:
+"Mebby I better jump in now and stop this thing."
+And then I thinks agin: "No, it is between them
+three and Providence."  Besides, I'm anxious to
+see who is going to get that pill with the science
+in it.  I gets to feeling jest like Providence hisself
+was in that there room picking out them pills with
+his own hands.  And I was anxious to see what
+Providence's ideas of right and wrong was like.
+So fur as I could see they was all three in the wrong,
+but if I had of been in there running them pills in
+Providence's place I would of let them all off kind
+o' easy.
+
+Henry, he ain't eat his pill yet.  He is jest looking
+at it and shaking.  The perfessor pulls out his
+watch and lays it on the table.
+
+"It is a quarter past eleven," he says.  "Mr.
+Murray, are you going to make me shoot you,
+after all?  I didn't want a scandal," he says.
+"It's for you to say whether you want to eat that
+pill and get your even chance, or whether you want
+to get shot.  The shooting method is sure, but it
+causes talk.  These pills won't.  WHICH?"
+
+And he pulls a revolver.  Which I suppose he
+had got that too when he went down after them
+pills.
+
+Henry, he looks at the gun.
+
+Then he looks at the pill.
+
+Then he swallers the pill.
+
+The perfessor puts his gun back into his pocket,
+and then he puts his pill into his mouth.  He don't
+swaller it.  He looks at the watch, and he looks at
+Henry.
+
+"Sixteen minutes past eleven," he says.  "AT
+EXACTLY TWENTY-NINE MINUTES TO TWELVE MR. MURRAY
+WILL BE DEAD.  I got the harmless one.  I can tell
+by the taste."
+
+And he put the pieces out into his hand, to show
+that he has chewed his'n up, not being willing to
+wait fifteen minutes fur a verdict from his digestive
+ornaments.  Then he put them pieces back into
+his mouth and chewed 'em up and swallered 'em
+down like he was eating cough drops.
+
+Henry has got sweat breaking out all over his
+face, and he tries to make fur the door, but he falls
+down onto a sofa.
+
+"This is murder," he says, weak-like.  And he
+tries to get up again, but this time he falls to the floor
+in a dead faint.
+
+"It's a dern short fifteen minutes," I thinks to
+myself.  "That perfessor must of put more science
+into Henry's pill than he thought he did fur it to
+of knocked him out this quick.  It ain't skeercly
+three minutes."
+
+When Henry falls the woman staggers and tries
+to throw herself on top of him.  The corners of
+her mouth was all drawed down, and her eyes was
+turned up.  But she don't yell none.  She can't.
+She tries, but she jest gurgles in her throat.  The
+perfessor won't let her fall acrost Henry.  He
+ketches her.  "Sit up, Jane," he says, with that
+Estelle look onto his face, "and let us have a talk."
+
+She looks at him with no more sense in her face
+than a piece of putty has got.  But she can't look
+away from him.
+
+And I'm kind o' paralyzed, too.  If that feller
+laying on the floor had only jest kicked oncet, or
+grunted, or done something, I could of loosened
+up and yelled, and I would of.  I jest NEEDED to
+fetch a yell.  But Henry ain't more'n dropped down
+there till I'm feeling jest like he'd ALWAYS been
+there, and I'd ALWAYS been staring into that room,
+and the last word any one spoke was said hundreds
+and hundreds of years ago.
+
+"You're a murderer," says Jane in a whisper,
+looking at the perfessor in that stare-eyed way.
+"You're a MURDERER," she says, saying it like she
+was trying to make herself feel sure he really was
+one.
+
+"Murder!" says the perfessor.  "Did you think
+I was going to run any chances for a pup like him?
+He's scared, that's all.  He's just fainted through
+fright.  He's a coward.  Those pills were both
+just bread and sugar.  He'll be all right in a minute
+or two.  I've just been showing you that the fellow
+hasn't got nerve enough nor brains enough for
+a fine woman like you, Jane," he says.
+
+Then Jane begins to sob and laugh, both to oncet,
+kind o' wild like, her voice clucking like a hen
+does, and she says:
+
+"It's worse then, it's worse!  It's worse for me
+than if it were a murder!  Some farces can be more
+tragic than any tragedy ever was," she says.  Or
+they was words to that effect.
+
+And if Henry had of been really dead she couldn't
+of took it no harder than she begun to take it now
+when she saw he was alive, but jest wasn't no good.
+But I seen she was taking on fur herself now more'n
+fur Henry.  Doctor Kirby always use to say women
+is made unlike most other animals in many ways.
+When they is foolish about a man they can stand
+to have that man killed a good 'eal better than to
+have him showed up ridiculous right in front of
+them.  They will still be crazy about the man that
+is dead, even if he was crooked.  But they don't
+never forgive the fellow that lets himself be made a
+fool and lets them look foolish, too.  And when
+the perfessor kicks Henry in the ribs, and Henry
+comes to and sneaks out, Jane, she never even turns
+her head and looks at him.
+
+"Jane," says the perfessor, when she quiets
+down some, "you have a lot o' things to forgive
+me.  But do you suppose I have learned enough
+so that we can make a go of it if we start all over
+again?"
+
+But Jane she never said nothing.
+
+"Jane," he says, "Estelle is going back to New
+England, as soon as Margery gets well, and she will
+stay there for good."
+
+Jane, she begins to take a little intrust then.
+
+"Did Estelle tell you so?" she asts.
+
+"No," says the perfessor.  "Estelle doesn't know
+it yet.  I'm going to break the news to her in the
+morning."
+
+But Jane still hates him.  She's making herself
+hate him hard.  She wouldn't of been a human
+woman if she had let herself be coaxed up all to
+oncet.  Purty soon she says: "I'm tired."  And
+she went out looking like the perfessor was a perfect
+stranger.  She was a peace, Jane was.
+
+After she left, the perfessor set there quite a spell
+and smoked.  And he was looking tired out, too.
+They wasn't no mistake about me.  I was jest
+dead all through my legs.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+I was down in the perfessor's labertory one day,
+and that was a queer place.  They was every
+kind of scientifics that has ever been dis-
+covered in it.  Some was pickled in bottles and some
+was stuffed and some was pinned to the walls with
+their wings spread out.  If you took hold of anything,
+it was likely to be a skull and give you the shivers or
+some electric contraption and shock you; and if you
+tipped over a jar and it broke, enough germs might
+get loose to slaughter a hull town.  I was helping the
+perfessor to unpack a lot of stuff some friends had sent
+him, and I noticed a bottle that had onto it, blowed
+in the glass:
+
+
+DANIEL, DUNNE AND COMPANY
+
+
+
+"That's funny," says I, out loud.
+
+"What is?" asts the perfessor.
+
+I showed him the bottle and told him how I was
+named after the company that made 'em.  He
+says to look around me.  They is all kinds of glass-
+ware in that room--bottles and jars and queer-
+shaped things with crooked tails and noses--and
+nigh every piece of glass the perfessor owns is made
+by that company.
+
+"Why," says the perfessor, "their factory is in
+this very town."
+
+And nothing would do fur me but I must go and
+see that factory.  I couldn't till the quarantine was
+pried loose from our house.  But when it was, I
+went down town and hunted up the place and looked
+her over.
+
+It was a big factory, and I was kind of proud of
+that.  I was glad she wasn't no measly, little, old-
+fashioned, run-down concern.  Of course, I wasn't
+really no relation to it and it wasn't none to me.
+But I was named fur it, too, and it come about as
+near to being a fambly as anything I had ever had
+or was likely to find.  So I was proud it seemed to
+be doing so well.
+
+I thinks as I looks at her of the thousands and
+thousands of bottles that has been coming
+out of there fur years and years, and will be fur
+years and years to come.  And one bottle not so
+much different from another one.  And all that was
+really knowed about me was jest the name on one
+out of all them millions and millions of bottles.  It
+made me feel kind of queer, when I thought of that,
+as if I didn't have no separate place in the world any
+more than one of them millions of bottles.  If any
+one will shut his eyes and say his own name over
+and over agin fur quite a spell, he will get kind of
+wonderized and mesmerized a-doing it--he will
+begin to wonder who the dickens he is, anyhow, and
+what he is, and what the difference between him
+and the next feller is.  He will wonder why he
+happens to be himself and the next feller HIMSELF.
+He wonders where himself leaves off and the rest
+of the world begins.  I been that way myself--all
+wonderized, so that I felt jest like I was a melting
+piece of the hull creation, and it was all shifting and
+drifting and changing and flowing, and not solid
+anywhere, and I could hardly keep myself from
+flowing into it.  It makes a person feel awful queer,
+like seeing a ghost would.  It makes him feel like
+HE wasn't no solider than a ghost himself.  Well,
+if you ever done that and got that feeling, you KNOW
+what I mean.  All of a sudden, when I am trying
+to take in all them millions and millions of bottles,
+it rushed onto me, that feeling, strong.  Thinking
+of them bottles had somehow brung it on.  The
+bigness of the hull creation, and the smallness of
+me, and the gait at which everything was racing
+and rushing ahead, made me want to grab hold of
+something solid and hang on.
+
+I reached out my hand, and it hit something
+solid all right.  It was a feller who was wheeling out
+a hand truck loaded with boxes from the shipping
+department.  I had been standing by the shipping
+department door, and I reached right agin him.
+
+He wants to know if I am drunk or a blanked
+fool.  So after some talk of that kind I borrows a
+chew of tobacco of him and we gets right well
+acquainted.
+
+I helped him finish loading his wagon and rode
+over to the freight depot with him and helped him
+unload her.  Lifting one of them boxes down from
+the wagon I got such a shock I like to of dropped her.
+
+Fur she was marked so many dozen, glass, handle
+with care, and she was addressed to Dr. Hartley
+L. Kirby, Atlanta, Ga.
+
+I managed to get that box onto the platform with-
+out busting her, and then I sets down on top of her
+awful weak.
+
+"What's the matter?" asts the feller I was with.
+
+"Nothing," says I.
+
+"You look sick," he says.  And I WAS feeling
+that-a-way.
+
+"Mebby I do," says I, "and it's enough to shake
+a feller up to find a dead man come to life sudden
+like this."
+
+"Great snakes, no!" says he, looking all around,
+"where?"
+
+But I didn't stop to chew the rag none.  I left
+him right there, with his mouth wide open, staring
+after me like I was crazy.  Half a block away I
+looked back and I seen him double over and slap his
+knee and laugh loud, like he had hearn a big joke,
+but what he was laughing at I never knew.
+
+I was tickled.  Tickled?  Jest so tickled I was
+plumb foolish with it.  The doctor was alive after
+all--I kept saying it over and over to myself--he
+hadn't drownded nor blowed away.  And I was go-
+ing to hunt him up.
+
+I had a little money.  The perfessor had paid it
+to me.  He had give me a job helping take care of
+his hosses and things like that, and wanted me to
+stay, and I had been thinking mebby I would fur
+a while.  But not now!
+
+I calkelated I could grab a ride that very night
+that would put me into Evansville the next morning.
+I figgered if I ketched a through freight from there
+on the next night I might get where he was almost
+as quick as them bottles did.
+
+I didn't think it was no use writing out my
+resignation fur the perfessor.  But I got quite a bit
+of grub from Biddy Malone to make a start on, fur
+I didn't figger on spending no more money than I
+had to on grub.  She asts me a lot of questions, and
+I had to lie to her a good deal, but I got the grub.
+And at ten that night I was in an empty bumping
+along south, along with a cross-eyed feller named
+Looney Hogan who happened to be travelling the
+same way.
+
+Riding on trains without paying fare ain't always
+the easy thing it sounds.  It is like a trade that has
+got to be learned.  They is different ways of doing
+it.  I have done every way frequent, except one.
+That I give up after trying her two, three times.
+That is riding the rods down underneath the cars,
+with a piece of board put acrost 'em to lay yourself on.
+
+I never want to go ANYWHERES agin bad enough to
+ride the rods.
+
+Because sometimes you arrive where you are going
+to partly smeared over the trucks and in no condi-
+tion fur to be made welcome to our city, as Doctor
+Kirby would say.  Sometimes you don't arrive.
+Every oncet in a while you read a little piece in a
+newspaper about a man being found alongside the
+tracks, considerable cut up, or laying right acrost
+them, mebby.  He is held in the morgue a while and
+no one knows who he is, and none of the train crew
+knows they has run over a man, and the engineer
+says they wasn't none on the track.  More'n likely
+that feller has been riding the rods, along about the
+middle of the train.  Mebby he let himself go to
+sleep and jest rolled off.  Mebby his piece of board
+slipped and he fell when the train jolted.  Or mebby
+he jest natcherally made up his mind he rather let
+loose and get squashed then get any more cinders
+into his eyes.  Riding the blind baggage or the
+bumpers gives me all the excitement I wants, or all
+the gambling chancet either; others can have the
+rods fur all of me.  And they IS some people ack-
+shally says they likes 'em best.
+
+A good place, if it is winter time, is the feed rack
+over a cattle car, fur the heat and steam from all
+them steers in there will keep you warm.  But don't
+crawl in no lumber car that is only loaded about
+half full, and short lengths and bundles of laths and
+shingles in her; fur they is likely to get to shifting
+and bumping.  Baled hay is purty good sometimes.
+Myself, not being like these bums that is too proud
+to work, I have often helped the fireman shovel
+coal and paid fur my ride that-a-way.  But an
+empty, fur gineral purposes, will do about as well as
+anything.
+
+This feller Looney Hogan that was with me was a
+kind of a harmless critter, and he didn't know jest
+where he was going, nor why.  He was mostly
+scared of things, and if you spoke to him quick he
+shivered first and then grinned idiotic so you wouldn't
+kick him, and when he talked he had a silly little
+giggle.  He had been made that-a-way in a reform
+school where they took him young and tried to
+work the cussedness out'n him by batting him
+around.  They worked it out, and purty nigh every-
+thing else along with it, I guess.  Looney had had
+a pardner whose name was Slim, he said; but a
+couple of years before Slim had fell overboard off'n
+a barge up to Duluth and never come up agin.
+Looney knowed Slim was drownded all right, but
+he was always travelling around looking at tanks
+and freight depots and switch shanties, fur Slim's
+mark to be fresh cut with a knife somewheres, so he
+would know where to foller and ketch up with him
+agin.  He knowed he would never find Slim's mark,
+he said, but he kept a-looking, and he guessed that
+was the way he got the name of Looney.
+
+Looney left me at Evansville.  He said he was
+going east from there, he guessed.  And I went
+along south.  But I was hindered considerable,
+being put off of trains three or four times, and hav-
+ing to grab these here slow local freights between
+towns all the way down through Kentuckey.  Any-
+wheres south of the Ohio River and east of the
+Mississippi River trainmen is grouchier to them they
+thinks is bums than north of it, anyhow.  And in
+some parts of it, if a real bum gets pinched, heaven
+help 'im, fur nothing else won't.
+
+One night, between twelve and one o'clock, I was
+put off of a freight train fur the second time in a
+place in the northern part of Tennessee, right near
+the Kentuckey line.  I set down in a lumber yard
+near the railroad track, and when she started up
+agin I grabbed onto the iron ladder and swung my-
+self aboard.  But the brakeman was watching fur
+me, and clumb down the ladder and stamped on my
+fingers.  So I dropped off, with one finger con-
+siderable mashed, and set down in that lumber yard
+wondering what next.
+
+It was a dark night, and so fur as I could see they
+wasn't much moving in that town.  Only a few
+places was lit up.  One was way acrost the town
+square from me, and it was the telephone exchange,
+with a man operator reading a book in there.  The
+other was the telegraph room in the depot about a
+hundred yards from me, and they was only two
+fellers in it, both smoking.  The main business part
+of the town was built up around the square, like lots
+of old-fashioned towns is, and they was jest enough
+brightness from four, five electric lights to show the
+shape of the square and be reflected from the
+windows of the closed-up stores.
+
+I knowed they was likely a watchman somewheres
+about, too.  I guessed I wouldn't wander around
+none and run no chances of getting took up by him.
+So I was getting ready to lay down on top of a level
+pile of boards and go to sleep when I hearn a curious
+kind of noise a way off, like it must be at the edge
+of town.
+
+It sounded like quite a bunch of cattle might
+shuffling along a dusty road.  The night was so
+quiet you could hear things plain from a long ways
+off.  It growed a little louder and a little nearer.
+And then it struck a plank bridge somewheres,
+and come acrost it with a clatter.  Then I knowed
+it wasn't cattle.  Cows and steers don't make that
+cantering kind of noise as a rule; they trot.  It was
+hosses crossing that bridge.  And they was quite a
+lot of 'em.
+
+As they struck the dirt road agin, I hearn a shot.
+And then another and another.  Then a dozen all
+to oncet, and away off through the night a woman
+screamed.
+
+I seen the man in the telephone place fling down
+his book and grab a pistol from I don't know where.
+He stepped out into the street and fired three shots
+into the air as fast as he could pull the trigger.  And
+as he done so they was a light flashed out in a build-
+ing way down the railroad track, and shots come
+answering from there.  Men's voices began to yell
+out; they was the noise of people running along
+plank sidewalks, and windows opening in the dark.
+Then with a rush the galloping noise come nearer,
+come closet; raced by the place where I was hiding,
+and nigh a hundred men with guns swept right
+into the middle of that square and pulled their
+hosses up.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+I seen the feller from the telephone exchange
+run down the street a little ways as the
+first rush hit the square, and fire his pistol
+twice.  Then he turned and made fur an alleyway,
+but as he turned they let him have it.  He throwed
+up his arms and made one long stagger, right
+acrost the bar of light that streamed out of the
+windows, and he fell into the shadder, out of sight,
+jest like a scorched moth drops dead into the dark-
+ness from a torch.
+
+Out of the middle of that bunch of riders come a
+big voice, yelling numbers, instead of men's names.
+Then different crowds lit out in all directions--
+some on foot, while others held their hosses--fur
+they seemed to have a plan laid ahead.
+
+And then things began to happen.  They hap-
+pened so quick and with such a whirl it was all
+unreal to me--shots and shouts, and windows
+breaking as they blazed away at the store fronts all
+around the square--and orders and cuss-words
+ringing out between the noise of shooting--and
+those electric lights shining on them as they tossed
+and trampled, and showing up masked faces here
+and there--and pounding hoofs, and hosses scream-
+like humans with excitement--and spurts
+of flame squirted sudden out of the ring of darkness
+round about the open place--and a bull-dog shut
+up in a store somewheres howling himself hoarse--
+and white puffs of powder smoke like ghosts that
+went a-drifting by the lights--it was all unreal
+to me, as if I had a fever and was dreaming it.
+That square was like a great big stage in front of
+me, and I laid in the darkness on my lumber pile
+and watched things like a show--not much scared
+because it WAS so derned unreal.
+
+From way down along the railroad track they
+come a sort of blunted roar, like blasting big stumps
+out--and then another and another.  Purty soon,
+down that way, a slim flame licked up the side of
+a big building there, and crooked its tongue over
+the top.  Then a second big building right beside
+it ketched afire, and they both showed up in their
+own light, big and angry and handsome, and the
+light showed up the men in front of 'em, too--
+guarding 'em, I guess, fur fear the town would get
+its nerve and make a fight to put 'em out.  They
+begun to light the whole town up as light as day,
+and paint a red patch onto the sky, that must of
+been noticed fur miles around.  It was a mighty
+purty sight to see 'em burn.  The smoke was
+rolling high, too, and the sparks flying and other
+things in danger of ketching, and after while a lick
+of smoke come drifting up my way.  I smelt her.
+It was tobacco burning in them warehouses.
+
+But that town had some fight in her, in spite
+of being took unexpected that-a-way.  It wasn't
+no coward town.  The light from the burning
+buildings made all the shadders around about seem
+all the darker.  And every once in a while, after
+the surprise of the first rush, they would come thin
+little streaks of fire out of the darkness somewheres,
+and the sound of shots.  And then a gang of riders
+would gallop in that direction shooting up all crea-
+tion.  But by the time the warehouses was all lit
+up so that you could see they was no hope of putting
+them out the shooting from the darkness had jest
+about stopped.
+
+It looked like them big tobacco warehouses was
+the main object of the raid.  Fur when they was
+burning past all chancet of saving, with walls and
+floors a-tumbling and crashing down and sending
+up great gouts of fresh flame as they fell, the leader
+sings out an order, and all that is not on their
+hosses jumps on, and they rides away from the blaze.
+They come across the square--not galloping now,
+but taking it easy, laughing and talking and cussing
+and joking each other--and passed right by my
+lumber pile agin and down the street they had
+come.  You bet I laid low on them boards while
+they was going by, and flattened myself out till
+I felt like a shingle.
+
+As I hearn their hoof-sounds getting farther
+off, I lifts up my head agin.  But they wasn't
+all gone, either.  Three that must of been up to
+some pertic'ler deviltry of their own come galloping
+acrost the square to ketch up with the main bunch.
+Two was quite a bit ahead of the third one, and he
+yelled to them to wait.  But they only laughed and
+rode harder.
+
+And then fur some fool reason that last feller
+pulled up his hoss and stopped.  He stopped in the
+road right in front of me, and wheeled his hoss
+acrost the road and stood up in his stirrups and took
+a long look at that blaze.  You'd 'a' said he had
+done it all himself and was mighty proud of it,
+the way he raised his head and looked back at that
+town.  He was so near that I hearn him draw in a
+slow, deep breath.  He stood still fur most a minute
+like that, black agin the red sky, and then he turned
+his hoss's head and jabbed him with his stirrup
+edge.
+
+Jest as the hoss started they come a shot from
+somewheres behind me.  I s'pose they was some
+one hid in the lumber piles, where the street crossed
+the railway, besides myself.  The hoss jumped
+forward at the shot, and the feller swayed sideways
+and dropped his gun and lost his stirrups and come
+down heavy on the ground.  His hoss galloped off.
+I heard the noise of some one running off through
+the dark, and stumbling agin the lumber.  It was
+the feller who had fired the shot running away.
+I suppose he thought the rest of them riders would
+come back, when they heard that shot, and hunt
+him down.
+
+I thought they might myself.  But I laid there,
+and jest waited.  If they come, I didn't want to
+be found running.  But they didn't come.  The
+two last ones had caught up with the main gang,
+I guess, fur purty soon I hearn them all crossing
+that plank bridge agin, and knowed they was gone.
+
+At first I guessed the feller on the ground must
+be dead.  But he wasn't, fur purty soon I hearn him
+groan.  He had mebby been stunned by his fall,
+and was coming to enough to feel his pain.
+
+I didn't feel like he orter be left there.  So I
+clumb down and went over to him.  He was lying
+on one side all kind of huddled up.  There had been
+a mask on his face, like the rest of them, with some
+hair onto the bottom of it to look like a beard.
+But now it had slipped down till it hung loose around
+his neck by the string.  They was enough light
+to see he wasn't nothing but a young feller.  He
+raised himself slow as I come near him, leaning on
+one arm and trying to set up.  The other arm
+hung loose and helpless.  Half setting up that-a-
+way he made a feel at his belt with his good hand,
+as I come near.  But that good arm was his prop,
+and when he took it off the ground he fell back.
+His hand come away empty from his belt.
+
+The big six-shooter he had been feeling fur
+wasn't in its holster, anyhow.  It had fell out when
+he tumbled.  I picked it up in the road jest a few
+feet from his shot-gun, and stood there with it in
+my hand, looking down at him.
+
+"Well," he says, in a drawly kind of voice,
+slow and feeble, but looking at me steady and
+trying to raise himself agin, "yo' can finish yo'
+little job now--yo' shot me from the darkness,
+and now yo' done got my pistol.  I reckon yo'
+better shoot AGIN."
+
+"I don't want to rub it in none," I says, "with
+you down and out, but from what I seen around
+this town to-night I guess you and your own gang
+got no GREAT objections to shooting from the dark
+yourselves."
+
+"Why don't yo' shoot then?" he says.  "It
+most suttinly is YO' turn now."  And he never
+batted an eye.
+
+"Bo," I says, "you got nerve.  I LIKE you, Bo.
+I didn't shoot you, and I ain't going to.  The feller
+that did has went.  I'm going to get you out of
+this.  Where you hurt?"
+
+"Hip," he says, "but that ain't much.  The thing
+that bothers me is this arm.  It's done busted.  I
+fell on it."
+
+I drug him out of the road and back of the lumber
+pile I had been laying on, and hurt him considerable
+a-doing it.
+
+"Now," I says, "what can I do fur you?"
+
+"I reckon yo' better leave me," he says, "without
+yo' want to get yo'self mixed up in all this."
+
+"If I do," I says, "you may bleed to death here:
+or anyway you would get found in the morning
+and be run in."
+
+"Yo' mighty good to me," says he, "considering
+yo' are no kin to this here part of the country at
+all.  I reckon by yo' talk yo' are one of them damn
+Yankees, ain't yo'?"
+
+In Illinoise a Yankee is some one from the East,
+but down South he is anybody from north of the
+Ohio, and though that there war was fought forty
+years ago some of them fellers down there don't
+know damn and Yankee is two words yet.  But
+shucks!--they don't mean no harm by it!  So
+I tells him I am a damn Yankee and asts him agin
+if I can do anything fur him.
+
+"Yes," he says, "yo' can tell a friend of mine Bud
+Davis has happened to an accident, and get him
+over here quick with his wagon to tote me home."
+
+I was to go down the railroad track past them
+burning warehouses till I come to the third street,
+and then turn to my left.  "The third house from
+the track has got an iron picket fence in front of
+it," says Bud, "and it's the only house in that part
+of town which has.  Beauregard Peoples lives
+there.  He is kin to me."
+
+"Yes," I says, "and Beauregard is jest as likely
+as not going to take a shot out of the front window
+at me, fur luck, afore I can tell him what I want.
+It seems to be a kind of habit in these here parts
+to-night--I'm getting homesick fur Illinoise.  But
+I'll take a chancet."
+
+"He won't shoot," says Bud, "if yo' go about it
+right.  Beauregard ain't going to be asleep with all
+this going on in town to-night.  Yo' rattle on the
+iron gate and he'll holler to know what yo' all
+want."
+
+"If he don't shoot first," I says.
+
+"When he hollers, yo' cry back at him yo' have
+found his OLD DEAD HOSS in the road.  It won't hurt
+to holler that loud, and that will make him let you
+within talking distance."
+
+"His old DEAD HOSS?"
+
+"Yo' don't need to know what that is.  HE
+will."  And then Bud told me enough of the signs
+and words to say, and things to do, to keep Beaure-
+gard from shooting--he said he reckoned he had
+trusted me so much he might as well go the hull
+hog.  Beauregard, he says, belongs to them riders
+too; they have friends in all the towns that watches
+the lay of the land fur them, he says.
+
+I made a long half-circle around them burning
+buildings, keeping in the dark, fur people was
+coming out in bunches, now that it was all over
+with, watching them fires burning, and talking
+excited, and saying the riders should be follered--
+only not follering.
+
+I found the house Bud meant, and they was a
+light in the second-story window.  I rattled on the
+gate.  A dog barked somewheres near, but I hearn
+his chain jangle and knowed he was fast, and I
+rattled on the gate agin.
+
+The light moved away from the window.  Then
+another front window opened quiet, and a voice
+says:
+
+"Doctor, is that yo' back agin?"
+
+"No," I says, "I ain't a doctor."
+
+"Stay where you are, then.  _I_ GOT YOU COVERED."
+
+"I am staying," I says, "don't shoot."
+
+"Who are yo'?"
+
+"A feller," I says, kind of sensing his gun through
+the darkness as I spoke, "who has found your
+OLD DEAD HOSS in the road."
+
+He didn't answer fur several minutes.  Then
+he says, using the words DEAD HOSS as Bud had said
+he would.
+
+"A DEAD HOSS is fitten fo' nothing but to skin."
+
+"Well," I says, using the words fur the third
+time, as instructed, "it is a DEAD HOSS all right."
+
+I hearn the window shut and purty soon the
+front door opened.
+
+"Come up here," he says.  I come.
+
+"Who rode that hoss yo' been talking about?"
+he asts.
+
+"One of the SILENT BRIGADE," I tells him, as Bud
+had told me to say.  I give him the grip Bud had
+showed me with his good hand.
+
+"Come on in," he says.
+
+He shut the door behind us and lighted a lamp
+agin.  And we looked each other over.  He was
+a scrawny little feller, with little gray eyes set
+near together, and some sandy-complected whiskers
+on his chin.  I told him about Bud, and what his
+fix was.
+
+"Damn it--oh, damn it all," he says, rubbing the
+bridge of his nose, "I don't see how on AIRTH I kin
+do it.  My wife's jest had a baby.  Do yo' hear
+that?"
+
+And I did hear a sound like kittens mewing,
+somewheres up stairs.  Beauregard, he grinned and
+rubbed his nose some more, and looked at me like
+he thought that mewing noise was the smartest
+sound that ever was made.
+
+"Boy," he says, grinning, "bo'n five hours ago.
+I've done named him Burley--after the tobaccer
+association, yo' know.  Yes, SIR, Burley Peoples
+is his name--and he shore kin squall, the derned
+little cuss!"
+
+"Yes," I says, "you better stay with Burley.
+Lend me a rig of some sort and I'll take Bud home."
+
+So we went out to Beauregard's stable with a
+lantern and hitched up one of his hosses to a light
+road wagon.  He went into the house and come
+back agin with a mattress fur Bud to lie on, and a
+part of a bottle of whiskey.  And I drove back to
+that lumber pile.  I guess I nearly killed Bud
+getting him into there.  But he wasn't bleeding
+much from his hip--it was his arm was giving
+him fits.
+
+We went slow, and the dawn broke with us four
+miles out of town.  It was broad daylight, and
+early morning noises stirring everywheres, when
+we drove up in front of an old farmhouse, with big
+brick chimbleys built on the outside of it, a couple
+of miles farther on.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+As I drove into the yard, a bare-headed old
+nigger with a game leg throwed down
+an armful of wood he was gathering and
+went limping up to the veranda as fast as he could.
+He opened the door and bawled out, pointing to
+us, before he had it fairly open:
+
+"O Marse WILLyum!  O Miss LUCY!  Dey've
+brung him home!  DAR he!"
+
+A little, bright, black-eyed old lady like a wren
+comes running out of the house, and chirps:
+
+"O Bud--O my honey boy!  Is he dead?"
+
+"I reckon not, Miss Lucy," says Bud raising
+himself up on the mattress as she runs up to the
+wagon, and trying to act like everything was all
+a joke.  She was jest high enough to kiss him over
+the edge of the wagon box.  A worried-looking old
+gentleman come out the door, seen Bud and his
+mother kissing each other, and then says to the old
+nigger man:
+
+"George, yo' old fool, what do yo' mean by
+shouting out like that?"
+
+"Marse Willyum--" begins George, explaining.
+
+"Shut up," says the old gentleman, very quiet.
+"Take the bay mare and go for Doctor Po'ter."
+Then he comes to the wagon and says:
+
+"So they got yo', Bud?  Yo' WOULD go night-
+riding like a rowdy and a thug!  Are yo' much
+hurt?"
+
+He said it easy and gentle, more than mad.
+But Bud, he flushed up, pale as he was, and didn't
+answer his dad direct.  He turned to his mother
+and said:
+
+"Miss Lucy, dear, it would 'a' done yo' heart
+good to see the way them trust warehouses blazed
+up!"
+
+And the old lady, smiling and crying both to
+oncet, says, "God bless her brave boy."  But the old
+gentleman looked mighty serious, and his worry
+settled into a frown between his eyes, and he turns
+to me and says:
+
+"Yo' must pardon us, sir, fo' neglecting to thank
+yo' sooner."  I told him that would be all right,
+fur him not to worry none.  And him and me and
+Mandy, which was the nigger cook, got Bud into
+the house and into his bed.  And his mother gets
+that busy ordering Mandy and the old gentleman
+around, to get things and fix things, and make Bud
+as easy as she could, that you could see she was one
+of them kind of woman that gets a lot of satisfaction
+out of having some one sick to fuss over.  And after
+quite a while George gets back with Doctor Porter.
+
+He sets Bud's arm, and he locates the bullet in
+him, and he says he guesses he'll do in a few weeks
+if nothing like blood poisoning nor gangrene nor
+inflammation sets in.
+
+Only the doctor says he "reckons" instead of
+he "guesses," which they all do down there.  And
+they all had them easy-going, wait-a-bit kind of
+voices, and didn't see no pertic'ler importance
+in their "r's."  It wasn't that you could spell it
+no different when they talked, but it sounded
+different.
+
+I eat my breakfast with the old gentleman, and
+then I took a sleep until time fur dinner.  They
+wouldn't hear of me leaving that night.  I fully
+intended to go on the next day, but before I knowed
+it I been there a couple of days, and have got very
+well acquainted with that fambly.
+
+Well, that was a house divided agin itself.  Miss
+Lucy, she is awful favourable to all this night-
+rider business.  She spunks up and her eyes sparkles
+whenever she thinks about that there tobaccer
+trust.
+
+She would of like to been a night-rider herself.
+But the old man, he says law and order is the main
+pint.  What the country needs, he says, ain't
+burning down tobaccer warehouses, and shooting
+your neighbours, and licking them with switches,
+fur no wrong done never righted another wrong.
+
+"But you were in the Ku Klux Klan yo'self,"
+says Miss Lucy.
+
+The old man says the Ku Kluxes was working
+fur a principle--the principle of keeping the white
+supremacy on top of the nigger race.  Fur if you
+let 'em quit work and go around balloting and voting
+it won't do.  It makes 'em biggity.  And a biggity
+nigger is laying up trouble fur himself.  Because
+sooner or later he will get to thinking he is as good
+as one of these here Angle-Saxtons you are always
+hearing so much talk about down South.  And if
+the Angle-Saxtons was to stand fur that, purty
+soon they would be sociable equality.  And next
+the hull dern country would be niggerized.  Them
+there Angle-Saxtons, that come over from Ireland
+and Scotland and France and the Great British
+Islands and settled up the South jest simply couldn't
+afford to let that happen, he says, and so they Ku
+Kluxed the niggers to make 'em quit voting.  It was
+THEIR job to MAKE law and order, he says, which
+they couldn't be with niggers getting the idea they
+had a right to govern.  So they Ku Kluxed 'em
+like gentlemen.  But these here night-riders, he
+says, is AGIN law and order--they can shoot up
+more law and order in one night than can be manu-
+factured agin in ten years.  He was a very quiet,
+peaceable old man, Mr. Davis was, and Bud says
+he was so dern foolish about law and order he had
+to up and shoot a man, about fifteen years ago, who
+hearn him talking that-a-way and said he reminded
+him of a Boston school teacher.
+
+But Miss Lucy and Bud, they tells me what all
+them night-ridings is fur.  It seems this here to-
+baccer trust is jest as mean and low-down and un-
+principled as all the rest of them trusts.  The farm-
+ers around there raised considerable tobaccer--
+more'n they did of anything else.  The trust had
+shoved the price so low they couldn't hardly make
+a living.  So they organized and said they would
+all hold their tobaccer fur a fair price.  But some of
+the farmers wouldn't organize--said they had
+a right to do what they pleased with their own to-
+baccer.  So the night-riders was formed to burn their
+barns and ruin their crops and whip 'em and shoot
+'em and make 'em jine.  And also to burn a few
+trust warehouses now and then, and show 'em this
+free American people, composed mainly out of the
+Angle-Saxton races, wasn't going to take no sass
+from anybody.
+
+An old feller by the name of Rufe Daniels who
+wouldn't jine the night-riders had been shot to
+death on his own door step, jest about a mile away,
+only a week or so before.  The night-riders mostly
+used these here automatic shot-guns, but they
+didn't bother with birdshot.  They mostly loaded
+their shells with buckshot.  A few bicycle ball
+bearings dropped out of old Rufe when they gathered
+him up and got him into shape to plant.  They
+is always some low-down cuss in every crowd that
+carries things to the point where they get brutal,
+Bud says; and he feels like them bicycle bearings
+was going a little too fur, though he wouldn't let
+on to his dad that he felt that-a-way.
+
+So fur as I could see they hadn't hurt the trust
+none to speak of, them night-riders.  But they had
+done considerable damage to their own county,
+fur folks was moving away, and the price of land
+had fell.  Still, I guess they must of got considerable
+satisfaction out of raising the deuce nights that-a-
+way; and sometimes that is worth a hull lot to a
+feller.  As fur as I could make out both the trust
+and the night-riders was in the wrong.  But, you
+take 'em one at a time, personal-like, and not into
+a gang, and most of them night-riders is good-dis-
+positioned folks.  I never knowed any trusts per-
+sonal, but mebby if you could ketch 'em the same
+way they would be similar.
+
+I asts George one day what he thought about it.
+George, he got mighty serious right off, like he felt
+his answer was going to be used to decide the hull
+thing by.  He was carrying a lot of scraps on a
+plate to a hound dog that had a kennel out near
+George's cabin, and he walled his eyes right thought-
+ful, and scratched his head with the fork he had been
+scraping the plate with, but fur a while nothing
+come of it.  Finally George says:
+
+"I'se 'spec' mah jedgment des about de same
+as Marse WILLyum's an' Miss LUCY's.  I'se notice
+hit mos' ingin'lly am de same."
+
+"That can't be, George," says I, "fur they think
+different ways."
+
+"Den if DAT am de case," says George, "dey ain't
+NO ONE kin settle hit twell hit settles hitse'f.
+
+"I'se mos' ingin'lly notice a thing DO settle
+hitse'f arter a while.  Yass, SAH, I'se notice dat!
+Long time ago dey was consid'ble gwines-on in
+dis hyah county, Marse Daniel.  I dunno ef yo'
+evah heah 'bout dat o' not, Marse Daniel, but dey
+was a wah fit right hyah in dis hyah county.  Such
+gwines-on as nevah was--dem dar Yankees a-ridin'
+aroun' an' eatin' up de face o' de yearth, like de
+plagues o' Pha'aoah, Marse Daniel, and rippin'
+and rarin' an' racin' an' stealin' evehything dey
+could lay dey han's on, Marse Daniel.  An' ouah
+folks a-ridin' and a racin' and projickin' aroun' in
+de same onsettled way.
+
+"Marse Willyum, he 'low HE gwine settle dat dar
+wah he-se'f--yass, SAH!  An' he got on he hoss,
+and he ride away an' jine Marse Jeb Stuart.  But
+dey don' settle hit.  Marse Ab'ham Linkum, he
+'low HE gwine settle hit, an' sen' millyums an'
+millyums mo' o' dem Yankees down hyah, Marse
+Daniel.  But dey des ONsettle hit wuss'n evah!
+But arter a while it des settle HITse'f.
+
+     "An' den freedom broke out among de niggers,
+and dey was mo' gwines-ON, an' talkin', an' some
+on 'em 'lowed dey was gwine ter be no mo' wohk,
+Marse Daniel.  But arter a while dat settle HITse'f,
+and dey all went back to wohk agin.  Den some on
+de niggers gits de notion, Marse Daniel, dey gwine
+foh to VOTE.  An' dey was mo' gwines-on, an' de Ku
+Kluxes come a projickin' aroun' nights, like
+de grave-yahds done been resu'rected, Marse
+Daniel, an' den arter a while dat trouble settle
+HITse'f.
+
+"Den arter de Ku Kluxes dey was de time
+Miss Lucy Buckner gwine ter mahy Marse Prent
+McMakin.  An' she don' want to ma'hy him, if dey
+give her her druthers about hit.  But Ol' Marse
+Kunnel Hampton, her gram-pa, and her aunt, MY
+Miss Lucy hyah, dey ain't gwine give her no
+druthers.  And dey was mo' gwines-ON.  But dat
+settle HITse'f, too."
+
+George, he begins to chuckle, and I ast him
+how.
+
+"Yass, SAH, dat settle HITse'f.  But I 'spec'
+Miss Lucy Buckner done he'p some in de settleMENT.
+Foh de day befoh de weddin' was gwine ter be,
+she ups an' she runs off wid a Yankee frien' of her
+brother, Kunnel Tom Buckner.  An' I'se 'spec'
+Kunnel Tom an' Marse Prent McMakin would
+o' settle' HIM ef dey evah had o' cotched him--
+dat dar David Ahmstrong!"
+
+"Who?" says I.
+
+"David Ahmstrong was his entitlement," says
+George, "an' he been gwine to de same college as
+Marse Tom Buckner, up no'th somewhah.  Dat's
+how-come he been visitin' Marse Tom des befoh
+de weddin' trouble done settle HIT se'f dat-a-
+way."
+
+Well, it give me quite a turn to run onto the
+mention of that there David Armstrong agin in this
+part of the country.  Here he had been jilting
+Miss Hampton way up in Indiany, and running
+away with another girl down here in Tennessee.
+Then it struck me mebby it is jest different parts
+of the same story I been hearing of, and Martha
+had got her part a little wrong.
+
+"George," I says, "what did you say Miss Lucy
+Buckner's gran-dad's name was?"
+
+"Kunnel Hampton--des de same as MY Miss
+Lucy befo' SHE done ma'hied Marse Willyum."
+
+That made me sure of it.  It was the same woman.
+She had run away with David Armstrong from this
+here same neighbourhood.  Then after he got her
+up North he had left her--or her left him.  And
+then she wasn't Miss Buckner no longer.  And she
+was mad and wouldn't call herself Mrs. Armstrong.
+So she moved away from where any one was lible
+to trace her to, and took her mother's maiden
+name, which was Hampton.
+
+"Well," I says, "what ever become of 'em after
+they run off, George?"
+
+But George has told about all he knows.  They
+went North, according to what everybody thinks,
+he says.  Prent McMakin, he follered and hunted.
+And Col. Tom Buckner, he done the same.  Fur
+about a year Colonel Tom, he was always making
+trips away from there to the North.  But whether
+he ever got any track of his sister and that David
+Armstrong nobody knowed.  Nobody never asked
+him.  Old Colonel Hampton, he grieved and he
+grieved, and not long after the runaway he up and
+died.  And Tom Buckner, he finally sold all he
+owned in that part of the country and moved
+further south.  George said he didn't rightly know
+whether it was Alabama or Florida.  Or it might
+of been Georgia.
+
+I thinks to myself that mebby Mrs. Davis would
+like to know where her niece is, and that I better
+tell her about Miss Hampton being in that there
+little Indiany town, and where it is.  And then I
+thinks to myself I better not butt in.  Fur Miss
+Hampton has likely got her own reasons fur keeping
+away from her folks, or else she wouldn't do it.
+Anyhow, it's none of MY affair to bring the subject
+up to 'em.  It looks to me like one of them things
+George has been gassing about--one of them
+things that has settled itself, and it ain't fur me to
+meddle and unsettle it.
+
+It set me to thinking about Martha, too.  Not
+that I hadn't thought of her lots of times.  I had
+often thought I would write her.  But I kept putting
+it off, and purty soon I kind of forgot Martha.  I
+had seen a lot of different girls of all kinds since I
+had seen Martha.  Yet, whenever I happened to
+think of Martha, I had always liked her best.  Only
+moving around the country so much makes it kind
+of hard to keep thinking steady of the same girl.
+Besides, I had lost that there half of a ring,
+too.
+
+But knowing what I did now about Miss Hampton
+being Miss Buckner--or Mrs. Armstrong--and
+related to these Davises made me want to get away
+from there.  Fur that secret made me feel kind of
+sneaking, like I wasn't being frank and open with
+them.  Yet if I had of told 'em I would of felt
+sneakinger yet fur giving Miss Hampton away.
+I never got into a mix up that-a-way betwixt my
+conscience and my duty but what it made me feel
+awful uncomfortable.  So I guessed I would light
+out from there.  They wasn't never no kinder,
+better people than them Davises, either.  They
+was so pleased with my bringing Bud home the night
+he was shot they would of jest natcherally give
+me half their farm if I had of ast them fur it.  They
+wanted me to stay there--they didn't say fur how
+long, and I guess they didn't give a dern.  But I
+was in a sweat to ketch up with Doctor Kirby
+agin.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+I made purty good time, and in a couple of
+days I was in Atlanta.  I knowed the doctor
+must of gone back into some branch of the
+medicine game--the bottles told me that.  I
+knowed it must be something that he needed some
+special kind of bottles fur, too, or he wouldn't
+of had them shipped all that distance, but would of
+bought them nearer.  I seen I was a dern fool fur
+rushing off and not inquiring what kind of bottles,
+so I could trace what he was into easier.
+
+It's hard work looking fur a man in a good-sized
+town.  I hung around hotel lobbies and places till
+I was tired of it, thinking he might come in.  And
+I looked through all the office buildings and read
+all the advertisements in the papers.  Then the
+second day I was there the state fair started up
+and I went out to it.
+
+I run acrost a couple I knowed out there the
+first thing--it was Watty and the snake-charmer
+woman.  Only she wasn't charming them now.
+Her and Watty had a Parisian Models' show.  I
+ast Watty where Dolly was.  He says he don't
+know, that Dolly has quit him.  By which I guess
+he means he has quit her.  I ast where Reginald is,
+and the Human Ostrich.  But from the way they
+answered my questions I seen I wasn't welcome
+none around there.  I suppose that Mrs. Ostrich
+and Watty had met up agin somewheres, and had
+jest natcherally run off with each other and left
+their famblies.  Like as not she had left poor old
+Reginald with that idiotic ostrich feller to sell to
+strangers that didn't know his disposition.  Or
+mebby by now Reginald was turned loose in the
+open country to shift fur himself, among wild
+snakes that never had no human education nor
+experience; and what chancet would a friendly
+snake like Reginald have in a gang like that?  Some
+women has jest simply got no conscience at all
+about their husbands and famblies, and that there
+Mrs. Ostrich was one of 'em.
+
+Well, a feller can be a derned fool sometimes.
+Fur all my looking around I wasted a lot of time
+before I thought of going to the one natcheral
+place--the freight depot of the road them bottles
+had been shipped by.  I had lost a week coming
+down.  But freight often loses more time than that.
+And it was at the freight depot that I found him.
+
+Tickled?  Well, yes!  Both of us.
+
+"Well, by George," says he, "you're good for
+sore eyes."
+
+Before he told me how he happened not to of
+drownded or blowed away or anything he says
+we better fix up a bit.  Which he meant I better.
+So he buys me duds from head to heel, and we goes
+to a Turkish bath place and I puts 'em on.  And
+then we goes and eats.  Hearty.
+
+"Now," he says, "Fido Cut-up, how did you find
+me?"*
+
+I told him about the bottles.
+
+"A dead loss, those bottles," he says.  "I wanted
+some non-refillable ones for a little scheme I had
+in mind, and I had to get them at a certain place
+--and now the scheme's up in the air and I can't
+use 'em."
+
+The doctor had changed some in looks in the year
+or more that had passed since I saw him floating
+away in that balloon.  And not fur the better.
+He told me how he had blowed clean acrost Lake
+Erie in that there balloon.  And then when he got
+over land agin and went to pull the cord that lets
+the parachute loose it wouldn't work at first.  He
+jest natcherally drifted on into the midst of nowhere,
+he said--miles and miles into Canada.  When
+he lit the balloon had lost so much gas and was
+flying so low that the parachute didn't open out
+quick enough to do much floating.  So he lit hard,
+and come near being knocked out fur good.  But
+
+----------
+*AUTHOR'S NOTE--Can it be that Danny struggles vaguely
+to report some reference to FIDUS ACHATES?
+
+that wasn't the worst of it, fur the exposure had
+crawled into his lungs by the time he found a house,
+and he got newmonia into them also, and like to
+of died.  Whilst I was laying sick he had been sick
+also, only his'n lasted much longer.
+
+But he tells me he has jest struck an idea fur a
+big scheme.  No little schemes go fur him any
+more, he says.  He wants money.  Real money.
+
+"How you going to get it?" I asts him.
+
+"Come along and I'll tell you," he says.  "We'll
+take a walk, and I'll show you how I got my idea."
+
+We left the restaurant and went along the brag
+street of that town, which it is awful proud of,
+past where the stores stops and the houses begins.
+We come to a fine-looking house on a corner--a
+swell place it was, with lots of palms and ferns
+and plants setting on the verandah and showing
+through the windows.  And stables back of it;
+and back of the stables a big yard with noises coming
+from it like they was circus animals there.  Which
+I found out later they really was, kept fur pets.
+You could tell the people that lived there had money.
+
+"This," says Doctor Kirby, as we walked by,
+"is the house that Jackson built.  Dr. Julius Jack-
+son--OLD Doctor Jackson, the man with an idea!
+The idea made all the money you smell around here."
+
+"What idea?"
+
+"The idea--the glorious humanitarian and
+philanthropic idea--of taking the kinks and curls
+out of the hair of the Afro-American brother,"
+says Doctor Kirby, "at so much per kink."
+
+This Doctor Jackson, he says, sells what he
+calls Anti-Curl to the niggers.  It is to straighten
+out their hair so it will look like white people's
+hair.  They is millions and millions of niggers,
+and every nigger has millions and millions of kinks,
+and so Doctor Jackson has got rich at it.  So rich
+he can afford to keep that there personal circus
+menagerie in his back yard, for his little boy to
+play with, and many other interesting things.  He
+must be worth two, three million dollars, Doctor
+Kirby says, and still a-making it, with more niggers
+growing up all the time fur to have their hair un-
+kinked.  Especially mulattoes and yaller niggers.
+Doctor Kirby says thinking what a great idea that
+Anti-Curl was give him his own great idea.  They
+is a gold mine there, he says, and Dr. Julius Jackson
+has only scratched a little off the top of it, but HE
+is going to dig deeper.
+
+"Why is it that the Afro-American brother buys
+Anti-Curl?" he asts.
+
+"Why?" I asts.
+
+"Because," he says, "he wants to be as much
+like a white man as he possibly can.  He strives
+to burst his birth's invidious bar, Danny.  They
+talk about progress and education for the Afro-
+American brother, and uplift and advancement
+and industrial education and manual training and
+all that sort of thing.  Especially we Northerners.
+But what the Afro-American brother thinks about
+and dreams about and longs for and prays
+to be--when he thinks at all--is to be white.
+Education, to his mind, is learning to talk like a
+white man.  Progress means aping the white man.
+Religion is dying and going to heaven and being a
+WHITE angel--listen to his prayers and sermons
+and you'll find that out.  He'll do anything he can,
+or give anything he can get his Ethiopian grub-
+hooks on, for something that he thinks is going to
+make him more like a white man.  Poor devil!
+Therefore the millions of Doctor Jackson Anti-
+Curl.
+
+"All this Doctor Jackson Anti-Curl has dis-
+covered and thought out and acted upon.  If he
+had gone just one step farther the Afro-American
+brother would have hailed him as a greater man
+than Abraham Lincoln, or either of the Washing-
+tons, George or Booker.  It remains for me,
+Danny--for US--to carry the torch ahead--to
+take up the work where the imagination of Doctor
+Jackson Anti-Curl has laid it down."
+
+"How?" asts I.
+
+"WE'LL PUT UP AND SELL A PREPARATION TO TURN THE
+NEGROES WHITE!"
+
+THAT was his great idea.  He was more excited
+over it than I ever seen him before about anything.
+
+It sounded like so easy a way to get rich it made
+me wonder why no one had ever done it before,
+if it could really be worked.  I didn't believe much
+it could be worked.
+
+But Doctor Kirby, he says he has begun his
+experiments already, with arsenic.  Arsenic, he
+says, will bleach anything.  Only he is kind of
+afraid of arsenic, too.  If he could only get hold of
+something that didn't cost much, and that would
+whiten them up fur a little while, he says, it wouldn't
+make no difference if they did get black agin.
+This here Anti-Curl stuff works like that--it
+takes the kinks out fur a little while, and they come
+back agin.  But that don't seem to hurt the sale
+none.  It only calls fur MORE of Doctor Jackson's
+medicine.
+
+The doctor takes me around to the place he boards
+at, and shows me a nigger waiter he has been ex-
+perimenting on.  He had paid the nigger's fine in a
+police court fur slashing another nigger some with
+a knife, and kept him from going into the chain-
+gang.  So the nigger agreed he could use his hide
+to try different kinds of medicines on.  He was a
+velvety-looking, chocolate-coloured kind of nigger
+to start with, and the best Doctor Kirby had been
+able to do so fur was to make a few little liver-
+coloured spots come onto him.  But it was making
+the nigger sick, and the doctor was afraid to go
+too fur with it, fur Sam might die and we would
+be at the expense of another nigger.  Peroxide of
+hidergin hadn't even phased him.  Nor a lot of
+other things we tried onto him.
+
+You never seen a nigger with his colour running
+into him so deep as Sam's did.  Sam, he was always
+apologizing about it, too.  You could see it made
+him feel real bad to think his colour was so stubborn.
+He felt like it wasn't being polite to the doctor and
+me, Sam did, fur his skin to act that-a-way.  He
+was a willing nigger, Sam was.  The doctor, he
+says he will find out the right stuff if he has to start
+at the letter A and work Sam through every drug
+in the hull blame alphabet down to Z.
+
+Which he finally struck it.  I don't exactly know
+what she had in her, but she was a mixture of some
+kind.  The only trouble with her was she didn't
+work equal and even--left Sam's face looking
+peeled and spotty in places.  But still, in them
+spots, Sam was six shades lighter.  The doctor
+says that is jest what he wants, that there passing-
+on-to-the-next-cage-we-have-the-spotted-girocutus-
+look, as he calls it.  The chocolate brown and the
+lighter spots side by side, he says, made a regular
+Before and After out of Sam's face, and was the
+best advertisement you could have.
+
+Then we goes and has a talk with Doctor Jackson
+himself.  Doctor Kirby has the idea mebby he
+will put some money into it.  Doctor Jackson was
+setting on his front veranda with his chair tilted
+back, and his feet, with red carpet slippers on 'em,
+was on the railing, and he was smoking one of these
+long black cigars that comes each one in a little
+glass tube all by itself.  He looks Sam over very
+thoughtful, and he says:
+
+"Yes, it will do the work well enough.  I can see
+that.  But will it sell?"
+
+Doctor Kirby makes him quite a speech.  I never
+hearn him make a better one.  Doctor Jackson he
+listens very calm, with his thumbs in the armholes
+of his vest, and moving his eyebrows up and down
+like he enjoyed it.  But he don't get excited none.
+Finally Doctor Kirby says he will undertake to
+show that it will sell--me and him will take a trip
+down into the black country ourselves and show
+what can be done with it, and take Sam along fur
+an object lesson.
+
+Well, they was a lot of rag-chewing.  Doctor
+Jackson don't warm up none, and he asts a million
+questions.  Like how much it costs a bottle to
+make it, and what was our idea how much it orter
+sell fur.  He says finally if we can sell a certain
+number of bottles in so long a time he will put some
+money into it.  Only, he says, they will be a stock
+company, and he will have to have fifty-one per
+cent. of the stock, or he won't put no money into
+it.  He says if things go well he will let Doctor
+Kirby be manager of that company, and let him
+have some stock in it too, and he will be president
+and treasurer of it himself.
+
+Doctor Kirby, he didn't like that, and said so.
+Said HE was going to organize that stock company,
+and control it himself.  But Doctor Jackson said
+he never put money into nothing he couldn't run.
+So it was settled we would give the stuff a try-out
+and report to him.  Before we went away from
+there it looked to me like Doctor Kirby and me was
+going to work fur this here Doctor Jackson, instead
+of making all them there millions fur ourselves.
+Which I didn't take much to that Anti-Curl man
+myself; he was so cold-blooded like.
+
+I didn't like the scheme itself any too well,
+neither.  Not any way you could look at it.  In
+the first place it seemed like a mean trick on the
+niggers.  Then I didn't much believe we could get
+away with it.
+
+The more I looked him over the more I seen
+Doctor Kirby had changed considerable.  When
+I first knowed him he liked to hear himself talking
+and he liked to live free and easy and he liked to
+be running around the country and all them things,
+more'n he liked to be making money.  Of course,
+he wanted it; but that wasn't the ONLY thing he
+was into the Sagraw game fur.  If he had money,
+he was free with it and would help most any one
+out of a hole.  But he wasn't thinking it and talking
+it all the time then.
+
+But now he was thinking money and dream-
+ing money and talking of nothing but how
+to get it.  And planning to make it out of
+skinning them niggers.  He didn't care a dern
+how he worked on their feelings to get it.  He
+didn't even seem to care whether he killed Sam
+trying them drugs onto him.  He wanted MONEY,
+and he wanted it so bad he was ready and
+willing to take up with most any wild scheme
+to make it.
+
+They was something about him now that didn't
+fit in much with the Doctor Kirby I had knowed.
+It seemed like he had spells when he saw himself
+how he had changed.  He wasn't gay and joking
+all the time like he had been before, neither.  I
+guess the doctor was getting along toward fifty
+years old.  I suppose he thought if he was ever
+going to get anything out of his gift of the gab he
+better settle down to something, and quit fooling
+around, and do it right away.  But it looked to
+me like he might never turn the trick.  Fur he was
+drinking right smart all the time.  Drinking made
+him think a lot, and thinking was making him look
+old.  He was more'n one year older than he had
+been a year ago.
+
+He kept a quart bottle in his room now.  The
+night after we had took Sam to see Doctor Jackson
+we was setting in his room, and he was hitting it
+purty hard.
+
+"Danny," he says to me, after a while, like he
+was talking out loud to himself too, "what did you
+think of Doctor Jackson?"
+
+"I don't like him much," I says.
+
+"Nor I," he says, frowning, and takes a drink.
+Then he says, after quite a few minutes of frowning
+and thinking, under his breath like: "He's a blame
+sight more decent than I am, for all of that."
+
+"Why?" I asts him.
+
+"Because Doctor Jackson," he says, "hasn't
+the least idea that he ISN'T decent, and getting his
+money in a decent way.  While at one time I
+was--"
+
+He breaks off and don't say what he was.  I
+asts him.  "I was going to say a gentleman,"
+he says, "but on reflection, I doubt if I was ever
+anything but a cheap imitation.  I never heard
+a man say that he was a gentleman at one time,
+that I didn't doubt him.  Also," he goes on, work-
+ing himself into a better humour again with the
+sound of his own voice, "if I HAD ever been a gentle-
+man at any time, enough of it would surely have
+stuck to me to keep me out of partnership with a
+man who cheats niggers."
+
+He takes another drink and says even twenty
+years of running around the country couldn't of
+took all the gentleman out of him like this, if he
+had ever been one, fur you can break, you can scatter
+the vase if you will, but the smell of the roses will
+stick round it still.
+
+I seen now the kind of conversations he is always
+having with himself when he gets jest so drunk
+and is thinking hard.  Only this time it happens
+to be out loud.
+
+"What is a gentleman?" I asts him, thinking
+if he wasn't one it might take his mind off himself a
+little to tell me.  "What MAKES one?"
+
+"Authorities differ," says Doctor Kirby, slouching
+down in his chair, and grinning like he knowed a
+joke he wasn't going to tell no one.  "I heard
+Doctor Jackson describe himself that way the other
+day."
+
+Well, speaking personal, I never had smelled
+none of roses.  I wasn't nothing but trash myself,
+so being a gentleman didn't bother me one way or
+the other.  The only reason I didn't want to see
+them niggers bunked so very bad was only jest
+because it was such a low-down, ornery kind of
+trick.
+
+"It ain't too late," I says, "to pull out of this
+nigger scheme yet and get into something more
+honest."
+
+"I don't know," he says thoughtful.  "I think
+perhaps it IS too late."  And he sets there looking
+like a man that is going over a good many years
+of life in his mind.  Purty soon he says:
+
+"As far as honesty goes--it isn't that so much,
+O Daniel-come-to-judgment!  It's about as honest
+as most medicine games.  It's--"  He stopped
+and frowned agin.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+"It's their being NIGGERS," he says.
+
+That made the difference fur me, too.  I dunno
+how, nor why.
+
+"I've tried nearly everything but blackmail,"
+he says, "and I'll probably be trying that by this
+time next year, if this scheme fails.  But there's
+something about their being niggers that makes
+me sick of this thing already--just as the time
+has come to make the start.  And I don't know
+WHY it should, either."  He slipped another big
+slug of whiskey into him, and purty soon he asts me:
+
+"Do you know what's the matter with me?"
+
+I asts him what.
+
+"I'm too decent to be a crook," he says, "and
+too crooked to be decent.  You've got to be one
+thing or the other steady to make it pay."
+
+Then he says:
+
+"Did you ever hear of the descent to Avernus,
+Danny?"
+
+"I might," I tells him, "and then agin I mightn't,
+but if I ever did, I don't remember what she is.
+What is she?"
+
+"It's the chute to the infernal regions," he says.
+"They say it's greased.  But it isn't.  It's really
+no easier sliding down than it is climbing
+back."
+
+Well, I seen this nigger scheme of our'n wasn't
+the only thing that was troubling Doctor Kirby
+that night.  It was thinking of all the schemes
+like it in the years past he had went into, and how
+he had went into 'em light-hearted and more'n
+half fur fun when he was a young man, and now he
+wasn't fitten fur nothing else but them kind of
+schemes, and he knowed it.  He was seeing himself
+how he had been changing, like another person
+could of seen it.  That's the main trouble with
+drinking to fergit yourself.  You fergit the wrong
+part of yourself.
+
+I left him purty soon, and went along to bed.
+My room was next to his'n, and they was a door
+between, so the two could be rented together if
+wanted, I suppose.  I went to sleep and woke up
+agin with a start out of a dream that had in it
+millions and millions and millions of niggers, every
+way you looked, and their mouths was all open red
+and their eyes walled white, fit to scare you out
+of your shoes.
+
+I hearn Doctor Kirby moving around in his
+room.  But purty soon he sets down and begins
+to talk to himself.  Everything else was quiet.
+I was kind of worried about him, he had taken so
+much, and hoped he wouldn't get a notion to go
+downtown that time o' night.  So I thinks I will
+see how he is acting, and steps over to the door be-
+tween the rooms.
+
+The key happened to be on my side, and I un-
+locked it.  But she only opens a little ways, fur
+his wash stand was near to the hinge end of the door.
+
+I looked through.  He is setting by the table,
+looking at a woman's picture that is propped up on
+it, and talking to himself.  He has never hearn
+me open the door, he is so interested.  But somehow,
+he don't look drunk.  He looks like he had fought
+his way up out of it, somehow--his forehead was
+sweaty, and they was one intoxicated lock of hair
+sticking to it; but that was the only un-sober-
+looking thing about him.  I guess his legs would
+of been unsteady if he had of tried to walk, but his
+intellects was uncomfortable and sober.
+
+He is still keeping up that same old argument
+with himself, or with the picture.
+
+"It isn't any use," I hearn him say, looking at
+the picture.
+
+Then he listened like he hearn it answering him.
+"Yes, you always say just that--just that,"
+he says.  "And I don't know why I keep on listening
+to you."
+
+The way he talked, and harkened fur an answer,
+when they was nothing there to answer, give me
+the creeps.
+
+"You don't help me," he goes on, "you don't
+help me at all.  You only make it harder.  Yes,
+this thing is worse than the others.  I know that.
+But I want money--and fool things like this HAVE
+sometimes made it.  No, I won't give it up.  No,
+there's no use making any more promises now.
+I know myself now.  And you ought to know me
+by this time, too.  Why can't you let me alone
+altogether?  I should think, when you see what I
+am, you'd let me be.
+
+"God help you! if you'd only stay away it
+wouldn't be so hard to go to hell!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+There's a lot of counties in Georgia where
+the blacks are equal in number to the
+whites, and two or three counties where
+the blacks number over the whites by two to one.
+It was fur a little town in one of the latter that we
+pinted ourselves, Doctor Kirby and me and Sam--
+right into the blackest part of the black belt.
+
+That country is full of big-sized plantations,
+where they raise cotton, cotton, cotton, and then
+MORE cotton.  Some of 'em raises fruit, too, and
+other things, of course; but cotton is the main
+stand-by, and it looks like it always will be.
+
+Some places there shows that things can't be
+so awful much changed since slavery days, and
+most of the niggers are sure enough country niggers
+yet.  Some rents their land right out from the
+owners, and some of 'em crops it on the shares,
+and very many of 'em jest works as hands.  A lot of
+'em don't do nigh so well now as they did when their
+bosses was their masters, they tell me; and then
+agin, some has done right well on their own hook.
+They intrusted me, because I never had been use
+to looking at so many niggers.  Every way you
+turn there they is niggers and then more niggers.
+
+Them that thinks they is awful easy to handle
+out of a natcheral respect fur white folks has got
+another guess coming.  They ain't so bad to get
+along with if you keep it most pintedly shoved
+into their heads they IS niggers.  You got to do
+that especial in the black belt, jest because they
+IS so many of 'em.  They is children all their lives,
+mebby, till some one minute of craziness may
+strike one of them, and then he is a devil temporary.
+Mebby, when the crazy fit has passed, some white
+woman is worse off than if she was dead, or mebby
+she IS dead, or mebby a loonatic fur life, and that
+nigger is a candidate fur a lynching bee and ginerally
+elected by an anonymous majority.
+
+Not that ALL niggers is that-a-way, nor HALF of
+'em, nor very MANY of 'em, even--but you can
+never tell WHICH nigger is going to be.  So in the
+black belt the white folks is mighty pertic'ler who
+comes along fooling with their niggers.  Fur you
+can never tell what turn a nigger's thoughts will
+take, once anything at all stirs 'em up.
+
+We didn't know them things then, Doctor Kirby
+and me didn't.  We didn't know we was moving
+light-hearted right into the middle of the biggest
+question that has ever been ast.  Which I disre-
+member exactly how that nigger question is worded,
+but they is always asting it in the South, and an-
+swering of it different ways.  We hadn't no idea
+how suspicious the white people in them awful
+black spots on the map can get over any one that
+comes along talking to their niggers.  We didn't
+know anything about niggers much, being both
+from the North, except what Doctor Kirby had
+counted on when he made his medicine, and THAT
+he knowed second-handed from other people.  We
+didn't take 'em very serious, nor all the talk we
+hearn about 'em down South.
+
+But even at that we mightn't of got into any
+trouble if it hadn't of been fur old Bishop Warren.
+But that is getting ahead of the story.
+
+We got into that little town--I might jest as
+well call it Cottonville--jest about supper time.
+Cottonville is a little place of not more'n six hundred
+people.  I guess four hundred of 'em must be niggers.
+
+After supper we got acquainted with purty
+nigh all the prominent citizens in town.  They was
+friendly with us, and we was friendly with them.
+Georgia had jest went fur prohibition a few months
+before that, and they hadn't opened up these here
+near-beer bar-rooms in the little towns yet, like
+they had in Atlanta and the big towns.  Georgia
+had went prohibition so the niggers couldn't get
+whiskey, some said; but others said they didn't
+know WHAT its excuse was.  Them prominent
+citizens was loafing around the hotel and every
+now and then inviting each other very mysterious
+into a back room that use to be a pool parlour.
+They had been several jugs come to town by express
+that day.  We went back several times ourselves,
+and soon began to get along purty well with them
+prominent citizens.
+
+Talking about this and that they finally edges
+around to the one thing everybody is sure to get
+to talking about sooner or later in the South--
+niggers.  And then they gets to telling us about
+this here Bishop Warren I has mentioned.
+
+He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was,
+and had a good deal of white blood into him, they
+say.  An ashy-coloured nigger, with bumps on
+his face, fat as a possum, and as cunning as a fox.
+He had plenty of brains into his head, too; but his
+brains had turned sour in his head the last few
+years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running
+through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a
+slab of bacon.  He used to be friends with a lot of
+big white folks, and the whites depended on him at
+one time to preach orderliness and obedience and
+agriculture and being in their place to the niggers.
+Fur years they thought he preached that-a-way.
+He always DID preach that-a-way when any whites
+was around, and he set on platforms sometimes
+with white preachers, and he got good donations
+fur schemes of different kinds.  But gradual the
+suspicion got around that when he was alone with
+a lot of niggers his nigger blood would get the best
+of him, and what he preached wasn't white su-
+premacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal.
+
+So the whites had fell away from him, and then
+his graft was gone, and then his brains turned sour
+in his head and got to working and fermenting in it
+like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad
+breaks by not being careful what he said before
+white people.  But the niggers liked him all the
+better fur that.
+
+They always had been more or less hell in the
+bishop's heart.  He had brains and he knowed it,
+and the white folks had let him see THEY knowed
+it, too.  And he was part white, and his white
+forefathers had been big men in their day, and yet,
+in spite of all of that, he had to herd with niggers
+and to pertend he liked it.  He was both white and
+black in his feelings about things, so some of his
+feelings counterdicted others, and one of these
+here race riots went on all the time in his own
+insides.  But gradual he got to the place where
+they was spells he hated both whites and niggers,
+but he hated the whites the worst.  And now, in
+the last two or three years, since his crazy streaks
+had growed as big as his sensible streaks, or bigger,
+they was no telling what he would preach to them
+niggers.  But whatever he preached most of them
+would believe.  It might be something crazy and
+harmless, or it might be crazy and harmful.
+
+He had been holding some revival meetings in
+nigger churches right there in that very county,
+and was at it not fur away from there right then.
+The idea had got around he was preaching some
+most unusual foolishness to the blacks.  Fur the
+niggers was all acting like they knowed something
+too good to mention to the white folks, all about
+there.  But some white men had gone to one of
+the meetings, and the bishop had preached one of
+his old-time sermons whilst they was there, telling
+the niggers to be orderly and agriculturous--he
+was considerable of a fox yet.  But he and the rest
+of the niggers was so DERNED anxious to be thought
+agriculturous and servitudinous that the whites
+smelt a rat, and wished he would go, fur they didn't
+want to chase him without they had to.
+
+Jest when we was getting along fine one of them
+prominent citizens asts the doctor was we there
+figgering on buying some land?
+
+"No," says the doctor, "we wasn't."
+
+They was silence fur quite a little spell.  Each
+prominent citizen had mebby had his hopes of
+unloading some.  They all looks a little sad, and
+then another prominent citizen asts us into the back
+room agin.
+
+When we returns to the front room another promi-
+nent citizen makes a little speech that was quite
+beautiful to hear, and says mebby we represents
+some new concern that ain't never been in them
+parts and is figgering on buying cotton.
+
+"No," the doctor says, "we ain't cotton buyers."
+
+Another prominent citizen has the idea mebby
+we is figgering on one of these here inter-Reuben
+trolley lines, so the Rubes in one village can ride
+over and visit the Rubes in the next.  And another
+one thinks mebby we is figgering on a telephone
+line.  And each one makes a very eloquent little
+speech about them things, and rings in something
+about our fair Southland.  And when both of them
+misses their guess it is time fur another visit to
+the back room.
+
+Was we selling something?
+
+We was.
+
+Was we selling fruit trees?
+
+We wasn't.
+
+Finally, after every one has a chew of natcheral
+leaf tobaccer all around, one prominent citizen
+makes so bold as to ast us very courteous if he might
+enquire what it was we was selling.
+
+The doctor says medicine.
+
+Then they was a slow grin went around that there
+crowd of prominent citizens.  And once agin we
+has to make a trip to that back room.  Fur they
+are all sure we must be taking orders fur something
+to beat that there prohibition game.  When they
+misses that guess they all gets kind of thoughtful
+and sad.  A couple of 'em don't take no more
+interest in us, but goes along home sighing-like,
+as if it wasn't no difference WHAT we sold as long as
+it wasn't what they was looking fur.
+
+But purty soon one of them asts:
+
+"What KIND of medicine?"
+
+The doctor, he tells about it.
+
+When he finishes you never seen such a change
+as had come onto the faces of that bunch.  I
+never seen such disgusted prominent citizens in
+my hull life.  They looked at each other embarrassed,
+like they had been ketched at something ornery.
+And they went out one at a time, saying good night
+to the hotel-keeper and in the most pinted way
+taking no notice of us at all.  It certainly was a
+chill.  We sees something is wrong, and we begins
+to have a notion of what it is.
+
+The hotel-keeper, he spits out his chew, and goes
+behind his little counter and takes a five-cent cigar
+out of his little show case and bites the end off
+careful.  Then he leans his elbows onto his counter
+and reads our names to himself out of the register
+book, and looks at us, and from us to the names,
+and from the names to us, like he is trying to figger
+out how he come to let us write 'em there.  Then
+he wants to know where we come from before we
+come to Atlanta, where we had registered from.
+We tells him we is from the North.  He lights
+his cigar like he didn't think much of that cigar
+and sticks it in his mouth and looks at us so long
+in an absent-minded kind of way it goes out.
+
+Then he says we orter go back North.
+
+"Why?" asts the doctor.
+
+He chewed his cigar purty nigh up to the middle
+of it before he answered, and when he spoke it was
+a soft kind of a drawl--not mad or loud--but
+like they was sorrowful thoughts working in him.
+
+"Yo' all done struck the wo'st paht o' the South
+to peddle yo' niggah medicine in, sah.  I reckon
+yo' must love 'em a heap to be that concehned
+over the colour of their skins."
+
+And he turned his back on us and went into the
+back room all by himself.
+
+We seen we was in wrong in that town.  The
+doctor says it will be no use trying to interduce
+our stuff there, and we might as well leave there
+in the morning and go over to Bairdstown, which
+was a little place about ten miles off the railroad,
+and make our start there.
+
+So we got a rig the next morning and drove
+acrost the country.  No one bid us good-bye,
+neither, and Doctor Kirby says it's a wonder they
+rented us the rig.
+
+But before we started that morning we noticed
+a funny thing.  We hadn't so much as spoke to
+any nigger, except our own nigger Sam, and he
+couldn't of told ALL the niggers in that town about
+the stuff to turn niggers white, even if he had set
+up all night to do it.  But every last nigger we
+saw looked like he knowed something about us.
+Even after we left town our nigger driver hailed
+two or three niggers in the road that acted that-a-
+way.  It seemed like they was all awful polite to
+us.  And yet they was different in their politeness
+than they was to them Georgia folks, which is their
+natcheral-born bosses--acted more familiar, some-
+how, as if they knowed we must be thinking about
+the same thing they was thinking about.
+
+About half-way to Bairdstown we stopped at a
+place to get a drink of water.  Seemingly the white
+folks was away fur the day, and an old nigger come
+up and talked to our driver while Sam and us was
+at the well.
+
+I seen them cutting their eyes at us, whilst they
+was unchecking the hosses to let them drink too,
+and then I hearn the one that belonged there say:
+
+"Is yo' SUAH dat hit air dem?"
+
+"SUAH!" says the driver.
+
+"How-come yo' so all-powerful SUAH about hit?"
+
+The driver pertended the harness needed some
+fixing, and they went around to the other side of the
+team and tinkered with one of the traces, a-talking
+to each other.  I hearn the old nigger say, kind of
+wonderized:
+
+"Is dey a-gwine dar NOW?"
+
+Sam, he was pulling a bucket of water up out of
+the well fur us with a windlass.  The doctor says
+to him:
+
+"Sam, what does all this mean?"
+
+Sam, he pertends he don't know what the doctor
+is talking about.  But Doctor Kirby he finally
+pins him down.  Sam hemmed and hawed considera-
+ble, making up his mind whether he better lie to
+us or not.  Then, all of a sudden, he busted out into
+an awful fit of laughing, and like to of fell in the
+well.  Seemingly he decided fur to tell us the truth.
+
+From what Sam says that there bishop has been
+holding revival meetings in Big Bethel, which is a
+nigger church right on the edge of Bairdstown,
+and niggers fur miles around has been coming night
+after night, and some of them whooping her up
+daytimes too.  And the bishop has worked himself
+up the last three or four nights to where he has
+been perdicting and prophesying, fur the spirit
+has hit the meeting hard.
+
+What he has been prophesying, Sam says, is
+the coming of a Messiah fur the nigger race--a
+new Elishyah, he says, as will lead them from
+out'n their inequality and bring 'em up to white
+standards right on the spot.  The whites has had
+their Messiah, the bishop says, but the niggers
+ain't never had none of their SPECIAL OWN yet.
+And they needs one bad, and one is sure a-coming.
+
+It seems the whites don't know yet jest what the
+bishop's been a-preaching.  But every nigger fur
+miles on every side of Big Bethel is a-listening and
+a-looking fur signs and omens, and has been fur
+two, three days now.  This here half-crazy bishop
+has got 'em worked up to where they is ready
+to believe anything, or do anything.
+
+So the night before when the word got out in
+Cottonville that we had some scheme to make the
+niggers white, the niggers there took up with the
+idea that the doctor was mebby the feller the
+bishop had been prophesying about, and for a sign
+and a omen and a miracle of his grace and powers
+was going out to Big Bethel to turn 'em white.
+Poor devils, they didn't see but what being turned
+white orter be a part of what they was to get from
+the coming of that there Messiah.
+
+News spreads among niggers quicker than among
+whites.  No one knows how they do it.  But I've
+hearn tales about how when war times was there,
+they would frequent have the news of a big fight
+before the white folks' papers would.  Soldiers
+has told me that in them there Philippine Islands
+we conquered from Spain, where they is so much
+nigger blood mixed up with other kinds in the
+islanders, this mysterious spreading around of
+news is jest the same.  And jest since nine o'clock
+the night before, the news had spread fur miles
+around that Bishop Warren's Messiah was on his
+way, and was going fur to turn the bishop white
+to show his power and grace, and he had with him
+one he had turned part white, and that was Sam,
+and one he had turned clear white, and that was me.
+And they was to be signs and wonders to behold
+at Big Bethel, with pillars of cloud and sounds of
+trumpets and fire squirting down from heaven,
+like it always use to be in them old Bible days, and
+them there niggers to be led singing and shouting
+and rejoicing into a land of milk and honey, forever-
+more, AMEN!
+
+That's what Sam says they are looking fur,
+dozens and scores and hundreds of them niggers
+round about.  Sam, he had lived in town five or
+six years, and he looked down on all these here
+ignoramus country niggers.  So he busts out laugh-
+ing at first, and he pertends like he don't take no
+stock in any of it.  Besides, he knowed well enough
+he wasn't spotted up by no Messiah, but it was the
+dope in the bottles done it.  But as he told about
+them goings-on Sam got more and more interested
+and warmed up to it, and his voice went into a kind
+of a sing-song like he was prophesying himself.
+And the other two niggers quit pertending to
+fool around the team and edged a little closeter,
+and a little closeter yet, with their mouths open
+and their heads a-nodding and the whites of their
+eyes a-rolling.
+
+Fur my part, I never hearn such a lot of dern
+foolishness in all my life.  But the doctor, he says
+nothing at all.  He listens to Sam ranting and rolling
+out big words and raving, and only frowns.  He
+climbs back into the buggy agin silent, and all the
+rest of the way to Bairdstown he set there with
+that scowl on his face.  I guesses he was thinking
+now, the way things had shaped up, he wouldn't
+sell none of his stuff at all without he fell right in
+with the reception chance had planned fur him.
+But if he did fall in with it, and pertend like he was
+a Messiah to them niggers, he could get all they
+had.  He was mebby thinking how much ornerier
+that would make the hull scheme.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+We got to Bairdstown early enough, but
+we didn't go to work there.  We wasted
+all that day.  They was something work-
+ing in the doctor's head he wasn't talking about.
+I supposed he was getting cold feet on the hull
+proposition.  Anyhow, he jest set around the little
+tavern in that place and done nothing all afternoon.
+
+The weather was fine, and we set out in front.
+We hadn't set there more'n an hour till I could
+tell we was being noticed by the blacks, not
+out open and above board.  But every now and
+then one or two or three would pass along down
+the street, and lazy about and take a look at us.
+They pertended they wasn't noticing, but they was.
+The word had got around, and they was a feeling
+in the air I didn't like at all.  Too much caged-up
+excitement among the niggers.  The doctor felt
+it too, I could see that.  But neither one of us said
+anything about it to the other.
+
+Along toward dusk we takes a walk.  They was
+a good-sized crick at the edge of that little place,
+and on it an old-fashioned worter mill.  Above
+the mill a little piece was a bridge.  We crossed it
+and walked along a road that follered the crick
+bank closte fur quite a spell.
+
+It wasn't much of a town--something betwixt a
+village and a settlement--although they was going
+to run a branch of the railroad over to it before very
+long.  It had had a chancet to get a railroad once,
+years before that.  But it had said then it didn't
+want no railroad.  So until lately every branch
+built through that part of the country grinned
+very sarcastic and give it the go-by.
+
+They was considerable woods standing along the
+crick, and around a turn in the road we come onto
+Sam, all of a sudden, talking with another nigger.
+Sam was jest a-laying it off to that nigger, but he
+kind of hushed as we come nearer.  Down the
+road quite a little piece was a good-sized wooden
+building that never had been painted and looked
+like it was a big barn.  Without knowing it the
+doctor and me had been pinting ourselves right
+toward Big Bethel.
+
+The nigger with Sam he yells out, when he sees
+us:
+
+"Glory be!  HYAH dey comes!  Hyah dey comes
+NOW!"
+
+And he throwed up his arms, and started on a
+lope up the road toward the church, singing out
+every ten or fifteen yards.  A little knot of niggers
+come out in front of the church when they hearn
+him coming.
+
+Sam, he stood his ground, and waited fur us to
+come up to him, kind of apologetic and sneaking-
+looking about something or other.
+
+"What kind of lies have you been telling these
+niggers, Sam?" says the doctor, very sharp and short
+and mad-like.
+
+Sam, he digs a stone out'n the road with the toe
+of his shoe, and kind of grins to himself, still looking
+sheepish.  But he says he opinionates he been telling
+them nothing at all.
+
+"I dunno how-come dey get all dem nigger notions
+in dey fool haid," Sam says, "but dey all waitin'
+dar inside de chu'ch do'--some of de mos' faiful
+an' de mos' pra'rful ones o' de Big Bethel cong'gation
+been dar fo' de las' houah a-waitin' an' a-watchin',
+spite o' de fac' dat reg'lah meetin' ain't gwine ter
+be called twell arter supper.  De bishop, he dar
+too.  Dey got some dese hyah coal-ile lamps dar
+des inside de chu'ch do' an' dey been keepin' on
+'em lighted, daytimes an' night times, fo' two days
+now, kaze dey say dey ain't gwine fo' ter be cotched
+napping when de bridegroom COMeth.  Yass, SAH!--
+dey's ten o' dese hyah vergims dar, five of 'em
+sleepin' an' five of 'em watchin', an' a-takin' tuhns
+at hit, an' mebby dat how-come free or fouah dey
+bes' young colo'hed mens been projickin' aroun'
+dar all arternoon, a-helpin' dem dat's a-waitin'
+twell de bridegroom COM eth!"
+
+We seen a little knot of them, down the road there
+in front of the church, gathering around the nigger
+that had been with Sam.  They all starts toward
+us.  But one man steps out in front of them all,
+and turns toward them and holds his hands up, and
+waves them back.  They all stops in their tracks.
+
+Then he turns his face toward us, and comes slow
+and sollum down the road in our direction, walking
+with a cane, and moving very dignified.  He was
+a couple of hundred yards away.
+
+But as he come closeter we gradually seen him
+plainer and plainer.  He was a big man, and stout,
+and dressed very neat in the same kind of rig as
+white bishops wear, with one of these white collars
+that buttons in the back.  I suppose he was coming
+on to meet us alone, because no one was fitten fur
+to give us the first welcome but himself.
+
+Well, it was all dern foolishness, and it was hard
+to believe it could all happen, and they ain't so
+many places in this here country it COULD happen.
+But fur all of it being foolishness, when he come
+down the road toward us so dignified and sollum
+and slow I ketched myself fur a minute feeling like
+we really had been elected to something and was
+going to take office soon.  And Sam, as the bishop
+come closeter and closeter, got to jerking and
+twitching with the excitement that he had been
+keeping in--and yet all the time Sam knowed it
+was dope and works and not faith that had made
+him spotted that-a-way.
+
+He stops, the bishop does, about ten yards from
+us and looks us over.
+
+"Ah yo' de gennleman known ter dis hyah sinful
+genehation by de style an' de entitlemint o' Docto'
+Hahtley Kirby?" he asts the doctor very ceremoni-
+ous and grand.
+
+The doctor give him a look that wasn't very
+encouraging, but he nodded to him.
+
+"Will yo' dismiss yo' sehvant in ordeh dat we
+kin hol' convehse an' communion in de midst er
+privacy?"
+
+The doctor, he nods to Sam, and Sam moseys
+along toward the church.
+
+"Now, then," says the doctor, sudden and sharp,
+"take off your hat and tell me what you want."
+
+The bishop's hand goes up to his head with a jerk
+before he thought.  Then it stops there, while him
+and the doctor looks at each other.  The bishop's
+mouth opens like he was wondering, but he slowly
+pulls his hat off and stands there bare-headed in the
+road.  But he wasn't really humble, that bishop.
+
+"Now," says the doctor, "tell me in as straight
+talk as you've got what all this damned foolishness
+among you niggers means."
+
+A queer kind of look passed over the bishop's
+face.  He hadn't expected to be met jest that way,
+mebby.  Whether he himself had really believed
+in the coming of that there new Messiah he had been
+perdicting, I never could settle in my mind.  Mebby
+he had been getting ready to pass HIMSELF off fur
+one before we come along and the niggers all got
+the fool idea Doctor Kirby was it.  Before the
+bishop spoke agin you could see his craziness and
+his cunningness both working in his face.  But
+when he did speak he didn't quit being ceremonious
+nor dignified.
+
+"De wohd has gone fo'th among de faiful an'
+de puah in heaht," he says, "dat er man has come
+accredited wi' signs an' wi' mahvels an' de poweh
+o' de sperrit fo' to lay his han' on de sons o' Ham
+an' ter make 'em des de same in colluh as de yuther
+sons of ea'th."
+
+"Then that word is a lie," says the doctor.  "I
+DID come here to try out some stuff to change the
+colour of negro skins.  That's all.  And I find
+your idiotic followers are all stirred up and waiting
+for some kind of a miracle monger.  What you have
+been preaching to them, you know best.  Is that
+all you want to know?"
+
+The bishop hems and haws and fiddles with his
+stick, and then he says:
+
+"Suh, will dish yeah prepa'shun SHO'LY do de
+wohk?"  Doctor Kirby tells him it will do the
+work all right.
+
+And then the bishop, after beating around the
+bush some more, comes out with his idea.  Whether
+he expected there would be any Messiah come or
+not, of course he knowed the doctor wasn't him.
+But he is willing to boost the doctor's game as long
+as it boosts HIS game.  He wants to be in on the
+deal.  He wants part of the graft.  He wants to
+get together with the doctor on a plan before the
+doctor sees the niggers.  And if the doctor don't
+want to keep on with the miracle end of it, the bishop
+shows him how he could do him good with no
+miracle attachment.  Fur he has an awful holt
+on them niggers, and his say-so will sell thousands
+and thousands of bottles.  What he is looking fur
+jest now is his little take-out.
+
+That was his craftiness and his cunningness
+working in him.  But all of a sudden one of his
+crazy streaks come bulging to the surface.  It come
+with a wild, eager look in his eyes.
+
+"Suh," he cries out, all of a sudden, "ef yo' kin
+make me white, fo' Gawd sakes, do hit!  Do hit!
+Ef yo' does, I gwine ter bless yo' all yo' days!
+
+"Yo' don' know--no one kin guess or comper-
+hen'--what des bein' white would mean ter me!
+Lawd!  Lawd!" he says, his voice soft-spoken,
+but more eager than ever as he went on, and plead-
+ing something pitiful to hear, "des think of all de
+Caucasian blood in me!  Gawd knows de nights
+er my youth I'se laid awake twell de dawn come
+red in de Eas' a-cryin' out ter Him only fo' ter be
+white!  DES TER BE WHITE!  Don' min' dem black,
+black niggers dar--don' think er DEM--dey ain't
+wuth nothin' nor fitten fo' no fate but what dey
+got--  But me!  What's done kep' me from gwine
+ter de top but dat one thing: _I_ WASN'T WHITE!  Hit
+air too late now--too late fo' dem ambitions I
+done trifle with an' shove behin' me--hit's too
+late fo' dat!  But ef I was des ter git one li'l
+year o' hit--ONE LI'L YEAR O' BEIN' WHITE!--befo'
+I died--"
+
+And he went on like that, shaking and stuttering
+there in the road, like a fit had struck him, crazy
+as a loon.  But he got hold of himself enough to
+quit talking, in a minute, and his cunning come
+back to him before he was through trembling.
+Then the doctor says slow and even, but not severe:
+
+"You go back to your people now, bishop, and
+tell them they've made a mistake about me.  And
+if you can, undo the harm you've done with this
+Messiah business.  As far as this stuff of mine is
+concerned, there's none of it for you nor for any
+other negro.  You tell them that.  There's none
+of it been sold yet--and there never will be."
+
+Then we turned away and left him standing there
+in the road, still with his hat off and his face
+working.
+
+Walking back toward the little tavern the doctor
+says:
+
+"Danny, this is the end of this game.  These
+people down here and that half-cracked, half-
+crooked old bishop have made me see a few things
+about the Afro-American brother.  It wasn't a
+good scheme in the first place.  And this wasn't the
+place to start it going, anyhow--I should have
+tried the niggers in the big towns.  But I'm out of
+it now, and I'm glad of it.  What we want to do is to
+get away from here to-morrow--go back to Atlanta
+and fix up a scheme to rob some widows and orphans,
+or something half-way respectable like that."
+
+Well, I drew a long breath.  I was with Doctor
+Kirby in everything he done, fur he was my friend,
+and I didn't intend to quit him.  But I was glad
+we was out of this, and hadn't sold none of that
+dope.  We both felt better because we hadn't.
+All them millions we was going to make--shucks!
+We didn't neither one of us give a dern about them
+getting away from us.  All we wanted was jest to
+get away from there and not get mixed up with
+no nigger problems any more.  We eat supper,
+and we set around a while, and we went to bed
+purty middling early, so as to get a good start
+in the morning.
+
+We got up early, but early as it was the devil had
+been up earlier in that neighbourhood.  About
+four o'clock that morning a white woman about
+a half a mile from the village had been attacked
+by a nigger.  They was doubt as to whether she
+would live, but if she lived they wasn't no doubts
+she would always be more or less crazy.  Fur
+besides everything else, he had beat her insensible.
+And he had choked her nearly to death.  The
+country-side was up, with guns and pistols look-
+ing fur that nigger.  It wasn't no trouble guessing
+what would happen to him when they ketched
+him, neither.
+
+"And," says Doctor Kirby, when we hearn of
+it, "I hope to high heaven they DO catch him!"
+
+They wasn't much doubt they would, either.
+They was already beating up the woods and bushes
+and gangs was riding up and down the roads, and
+every nigger's house fur miles around was being
+searched and watched.
+
+We soon seen we would have trouble getting
+hosses and a rig in the village to take us to the
+railroad.  Many of the hosses was being ridden in
+the man-hunt.  And most of the men who might
+have done the driving was busy at that too.  The
+hotel-keeper himself had left his place standing
+wide open and went out.  We didn't get any break-
+fast neither.
+
+"Danny," says the doctor, "we'll just put enough
+money to pay the bill in an envelope on the register
+here, and strike out on shank's ponies.  It's only
+nine or ten miles to the railroad--we'll walk."
+
+"But how about our stuff?" I asts him.  We
+had two big cases full of sample bottles of that dope,
+besides our suit cases.
+
+"Hang the dope!" says the doctor, "I don't
+ever want to see it or hear of it again!  We'll leave
+it here.  Put the things out of your suit case into
+mine, and leave that here too.  Sam can carry
+mine.  I want to be on the move."
+
+So we left, with Sam carrying the one suit case.
+It wasn't nine in the morning yet, and we was
+starting out purty empty fur a long walk.
+
+"Sam," says the doctor, as we was passing that
+there Big Bethel church--and it showed up there
+silent and shabby in the morning, like a old coloured
+man that knows a heap more'n he's going to tell--
+"Sam, were you at the meeting here last night?"
+
+"Yass, suh!"
+
+"I suppose it was a pretty tame affair after they
+found out their Elisha wasn't coming after all?"
+
+Sam, he walled his eyes, and then he kind of
+chuckled.
+
+"Well, suh," he says, "I 'spicions de mos' on 'em
+don' know dat YIT!"
+
+The doctor asts him what he means.
+
+It seems the bishop must of done some thinking
+after we left him in the road or on his way back to
+that church.  They had all begun to believe that
+there Elishyah was on the way to 'em, and the
+bishop's credit was more or less wrapped up with
+our being it.  It was true he hadn't started that
+belief; but it was believed, and he didn't dare to
+stop it now.  Fur, if he stopped it, they would all
+think he had fell down on his prophetics, even
+although he hadn't prophesied jest exactly us.
+He was in a tight place, that bishop, but I bet you
+could always depend on him to get out of it with his
+flock.  So what he told them niggers at the meeting
+last night was that he brung 'em a message from
+Elishyah, Sam says, the Elishyah that was to come.
+And the message was that the time was not ripe
+fur him to reveal himself as Elishyah unto the eyes
+of all men, fur they had been too much sinfulness
+and wickedness and walking into the ways of evil,
+right amongst that very congregation, and disobedi-
+ence of the bishop, which was their guide.  And
+he had sent 'em word, Elishyah had, that the bishop
+was his trusted servant, and into the keeping of the
+bishop was give the power to deal with his people
+and prepare them fur the great day to come.  And
+the bishop would give the word of his coming.  He
+was a box, that bishop was, in spite of his crazy
+streaks; and he had found a way to make himself
+stronger than ever with his bunch out of the very
+kind of thing that would have spoiled most people's
+graft.  They had had a big meeting till nearly
+morning, and the power had hit 'em strong.  Sam
+told us all about it.
+
+But the thing that seemed to interest the doctor,
+and made him frown, was the idea that all them
+niggers round about there still had the idea he was
+the feller that had been prophesied to come.  All
+except Sam, mebby.  Sam had spells when he was
+real sensible, and other spells when he was as bad
+as the believingest of them all.
+
+It was a fine day, and really joyous to be a-walking.
+It would of been a good deal joyouser if we had had
+some breakfast, but we figgered we would stop
+somewheres at noon and lay in a good, square,
+country meal.
+
+That wasn't such a very thick settled country.
+But everybody seemed to know about the man-
+hunt that was going on, here, there, and everywhere.
+People would come down to the road side as we
+passed, and gaze after us.  Or mebby ast us if
+we knowed whether he had been ketched yet.
+Women and kids mostly, or old men, but now
+and then a younger man too.  We noticed they
+wasn't no niggers to speak of that wasn't
+busier'n all get out, working at something or
+other, that day.
+
+They is considerable woods in that country yet,
+though lots has been cut off.  But they was some-
+times right long stretches where they would be
+woods on both sides of the road, more or less thick,
+with underbrush between the trees.  We tramped
+along, each busy thinking his own thoughts, and
+having a purty good time jest doing that without
+there being no use of talking.  I was thinking that
+I liked the doctor better fur turning his back on all
+this game, jest when he might of made some sort
+of a deal with the bishop and really made some
+money out of it in the end.  He never was so good
+a business man as he thought he was, Doctor
+Kirby wasn't.  He always could make himself
+think he was.  But when it come right down
+to brass tacks he wasn't.  You give him a scheme
+that would TALK well, the kind of a josh talk he liked
+to get off fur his own enjoyment, and he would take
+up with it every time instead of one that had more
+promise of money to it if it was worked harder.
+He was thinking of the TALK more'n he was of the
+money, mostly; and he was always saying some-
+thing about art fur art's sake, which was plumb
+foolishness, fur he never painted no pictures.  Well,
+he never got over being more or less of a puzzle
+to me.  But fur some reason or other this morning
+he seemed to be in a better humour with himself,
+after we had walked a while, than I had seen him
+in fur a long time.
+
+We come to the top of one long hill, which it had
+made us sweat to climb, and without saying nothing
+to each other we both stopped and took off our
+hats and wiped our foreheads, and drawed long
+breaths, content to stand there fur jest a minute
+or two and look around us.  The road run straight
+ahead, and dipped down, and then clumb up
+another hill about an eighth of a mile in front of
+us.  It made a little valley.  Jest about the middle,
+between the two hills, a crick meandered through
+the bottom land.  Woods growed along the crick,
+and along both sides of the road we was travelling.
+Right nigh the crick they was another road come
+out of the woods to the left-hand side, and switched
+into the road we was travelling, and used the same
+bridge to cross the crick by.  They was three or
+four houses here and there, with chimbleys built
+up on the outside of them, and blue smoke coming
+out.  We stood and looked at the sight before us
+and forgot all the troubles we had left behind, fur
+a couple of minutes--it all looked so peaceful
+and quiet and homeyfied and nice.
+
+"Well," says the doctor, after we had stood
+there a piece, "I guess we better be moving on again,
+Danny."
+
+But jest as Sam, who was follering along behind
+with that suit case, picks it up and puts it on his head
+agin, they come a sound, from away off in the distance
+somewheres, that made him set it down quick.  And
+we all stops in our tracks and looks at each other.
+
+It was the voice of a hound dog--not so awful
+loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and carried
+to us on the wind.  And then in a minute it come
+agin, sharper and quicker.  They yells like that
+when they have struck a scent.
+
+As we stood and looked at each other they come
+a crackle in the underbrush, jest to the left of us.
+We turned our heads that-a-way, jest as a nigger
+man give a leap to the top of a rail fence that
+separated the road from the woods.  He was going
+so fast that instead of climbing that fence and bal-
+ancing on the top and jumping off he jest simply
+seemed to hit the top rail and bounce on over, like
+he had been throwed out of the heart of the woods,
+and he fell sprawling over and over in the road,
+right before our feet.
+
+He was onto his feet in a second, and fur a minute
+he stood up straight and looked at us--an ashes-
+coloured nigger, ragged and bleeding from the under-
+brush, red-eyed, and with slavers trickling from his
+red lips, and sobbing and gasping and panting fur
+breath.  Under his brown skin, where his shirt
+was torn open acrost his chest, you could see that
+nigger's heart a-beating.
+
+But as he looked at us they come a sudden change
+acrost his face--he must of seen the doctor before,
+and with a sob he throwed himself on his knees in
+the road and clasped his hands and held 'em out
+toward Doctor Kirby.
+
+"ELISHyah!  ELISHyah!" he sings out, rocking
+of his body in a kind of tune, "reveal yo'se'f, reveal
+yo'se'f an' he'p me NOW!  Lawd Gawd ELISHyah,
+beckon fo' a CHA'iot, yo' cha'iot of FIAH!  Lif' me,
+lif' me--lif' me away f'um hyah in er cha'iot o' FIAH!"
+
+The doctor, he turned his head away, and I
+knowed the thought working in him was the thought
+of that white woman that would always be an
+idiot for life, if she lived.  But his lips was dumb,
+and his one hand stretched itself out toward that
+nigger in the road and made a wiping motion, like
+he was trying fur to wipe the picture of him, and
+the thought of him, off'n a slate forevermore.
+
+Jest then, nearer and louder and sharper, and
+with an eager sound, like they knowed they almost
+had him now, them hounds' voices come ringing
+through the woods, and with them come the mixed-
+up shouts of men.
+
+"RUN!" yells Sam, waving of that suit case round
+his head, fur one nigger will always try to help
+another no matter what he's done.  "Run fo' de
+branch--git yo' foots in de worter an' fling 'em
+off de scent!"
+
+He bounded down the hill, that red-eyed nigger,
+and left us standing there.  But before he reached
+the crick the whole man-hunt come busting through
+the woods, the dogs a-straining at their straps.
+The men was all on foot, with guns and pistols in
+their hands.  They seen the nigger, and they all
+let out a yell, and was after him.  They ketched
+him at the crick, and took him off along that road
+that turned off to the left.  I hearn later he was a
+member of Bishop Warren's congregation, so they
+hung him right in front of Big Bethel church.
+
+We stood there on top of the hill and saw the
+chase and capture.  Doctor Kirby's face was
+sweating worse than when we first clumb the hill.
+He was thinking about that nigger that had pleaded
+with him.  He was thinking also of the woman.
+He was glad it hadn't been up to him personal
+right then and there to butt in and stop a lynching.
+He was glad, fur with them two pictures in front
+of him he didn't know what he would of done.
+
+"Thank heaven!" I hearn him say to himself.
+"Thank heaven that it wasn't REALLY in my power
+to choose!"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+
+Well, we had pork and greens fur dinner
+that day, with the best corn-bread I ever
+eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet
+potato pie.  We got 'em at the house of a feller
+named Withers--Old Daddy Withers.  Which if
+they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer
+old woman than his wife, I never run acrost 'em yet.
+
+They lived all alone, them Witherses, with only
+a couple of niggers to help them run their farm.
+After we eats our dinner and Sam gets his'n out to the
+kitchen, we sets out in front of the house and gets
+to talking with them, and gets real well acquainted.
+Which we soon found out the secret of old Daddy
+Withers's life--that there innocent-looking old
+jigger was a poet.  He was kind of proud of it and
+kind of shamed of it both to oncet.  The way
+it come out was when the doctor says one of them
+quotations he is always getting off, and the old man
+he looks pleased and says the rest of the piece it
+dropped out of straight through.
+
+Then they had a great time quoting it at each
+other, them two, and I seen the doctor is good to
+loaf around there the rest of the day, like as not.
+Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-
+looking over something or other, and she leans over
+and whispers to the old man:
+
+"Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?"
+
+The old man, he shakes his head, no.  But she
+slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a
+little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands
+it to the doctor.
+
+"Bless my soul," says Doctor Kirby, looking at
+the old man, "you don't mean to say you write
+verse yourself?"
+
+The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up
+into the roots of his white hair, and down into his
+white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at
+the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.
+
+"Mother," he says, "yo' shouldn't have done
+that!"  They had had a boy years before, and he
+had died, but he always called her mother the same
+as if the boy was living.  He goes into the house
+and gets his pipe, and brings it out and lights it,
+acting like that book of poetry was a mighty small
+matter to him.  But he looks at Doctor Kirby out
+of the corner of his eyes, and can't keep from getting
+sort of eager and trembly with his pipe; and I could
+see he was really anxious over what the doctor was
+thinking of them poems he wrote.  The doctor
+reads some of 'em out loud.
+
+Well, it was kind of home-made poetry, Old Daddy
+Withers's was.  It wasn't like no other poetry I ever
+struck.  And I could tell the doctor was thinking
+the same about it.  It sounded somehow like it
+hadn't been jointed together right.  You would
+keep listening fur it to rhyme, and get all worked up
+watching and waiting fur it to, and make bets with
+yourself whether it would rhyme or it wouldn't.
+And then it ginerally wouldn't.  I never hearn
+such poetry to get a person's expectances all worked
+up, and then go back on 'em.  But if you could
+of told what it was all about, you wouldn't of minded
+that so much.  Not that you can tell what most
+poetry is about, but you don't care so long as
+it keeps hopping along lively.  What you want in
+poetry to make her sound good, according to my
+way of thinking, is to make her jump lively, and
+then stop with a bang on the rhymes.  But Daddy
+Withers was so independent-like he would jest
+natcherally try to force two words to rhyme whether
+the Lord made 'em fur mates or not--like as if
+you would try to make a couple of kids kiss and
+make up by bumping their heads together.  They
+jest simply won't do it.  But Doctor Kirby, he
+let on like he thought it was fine poetry, and he
+read them pieces over and over agin, out loud, and
+the old man and the old woman was both mighty
+tickled with the way he done it.  He wouldn't
+of had 'em know fur anything he didn't believe it
+was the finest poetry ever wrote, Doctor Kirby
+wouldn't.
+
+They was four little books of it altogether.  Slim
+books that looked as if they hadn't had enough to
+eat, like a stray cat whose ribs is rubbing together.
+It had cost Daddy Withers five hundred dollars
+apiece to get 'em published.  A feller in Boston
+charged him that much, he said.  It seems he would
+go along fur years, raking and scraping of his money
+together, so as to get enough ahead to get out another
+book.  Each time he had his hopes the big news-
+papers would mebby pay some attention to it, and
+he would get recognized.
+
+"But they never did," said the old man, kind of
+sad, "it always fell flat."
+
+"Why, FATHER!"--the old lady begins, and finishes
+by running back into the house agin.  She is out
+in a minute with a clipping from a newspaper and
+hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid
+with copper-toed boots.  The doctor reads it all
+the way through, and then he hands it back without
+saying a word.  The old lady goes away to fiddle
+around about the housework purty soon and the
+old man looks at the doctor and says:
+
+"Well, you see, don't you?"
+
+"Yes," says the doctor, very gentle.
+
+"I wouldn't have HER know for the world," says
+Daddy Withers.  "_I_ know and YOU know that news-
+paper piece is just simply poking fun at my poetry,
+and making a fool of me, the whole way through.
+As soon as I read it over careful I saw it wasn't
+really praise, though there was a minute or two I
+thought my recognition had come.  But SHE don't
+know it ain't serious from start to finish.  SHE was
+all-mighty pleased when that piece come out in
+print.  And I don't intend she ever shall know it
+ain't real praise."
+
+His wife was so proud when that piece come out
+in that New York paper, he said, she cried over it.
+She said now she was glad they had been doing
+without things fur years and years so they could
+get them little books printed, one after the other,
+fur now fame was coming.  But sometimes, Daddy
+Withers says, he suspicions she really knows he has
+been made a fool of, and is pertending not to see it,
+fur his sake, the same as he is pertending fur HER
+sake.  Well, they was a mighty nice old couple,
+and the doctor done a heap of pertending fur both
+their sakes--they wasn't nothing else to do.
+
+"How'd you come to get started at it?" he asts.
+
+Daddy Withers says he don't rightly know.
+Mebby, he says, it was living there all his life and
+watching things growing--watching the cotton
+grow, and the corn and getting acquainted with
+birds and animals and trees and things.  Helping
+of things to grow, he says, is a good way to under-
+stand how God must feel about humans.  For
+what you plant and help to grow, he says, you are
+sure to get to caring a heap about.  You can't
+help it.  And that is the reason, he says, God can
+be depended on to pull the human race through in
+the end, even if appearances do look to be agin His
+doing it sometimes, fur He started it to growing
+in the first place and that-a-way He got interested
+personal in it.  And that is the main idea, he says,
+he has all the time been trying to get into that there
+poetry of his'n.  But he reckons he ain't got her in.
+Leastways, he says, no one has never seen her there
+but the doctor and the old lady and himself.  Well,
+for my part, I never would of seen it there myself,
+but when he said it out plain like that any one could
+of told what he meant.
+
+You hadn't orter lay things up agin folks if the
+folks can't help 'em.  And I will say Daddy Withers
+was a fine old boy in spite of his poetry.  Which
+it never really done any harm, except being expensive
+to him, and lots will drink that much up and never
+figger it an expense, but one of the necessities of
+life.  We went all over his place with him, and we
+noticed around his house a lot of tin cans tacked
+up to posts and trees.  They was fur the birds to
+drink out of, and all the birds around there had
+found out about it, and about Daddy Withers, and
+wasn't scared of him at all.  He could get acquainted
+with animals, too, so that after a long spell sometimes
+they would even let him handle them.  But not if
+any one was around.  They was a crow he had made
+a pet of, used to hop around in front of him, and try
+fur to talk to him.  If he went to sleep in the front
+yard whilst he was reading, that crow had a favour-
+ite trick of stealing his spectacles off'n his nose and
+flying up to the ridgepole of the house, and cawing
+at him.  Once he had been setting out a row of
+tomato plants very careful, and he got to the end
+of the row and turned around, and that there crow
+had been hopping along behind very sollum, pulling
+up each plant as he set it out.  It acted like it had
+done something mighty smart, and knowed it,
+that crow.  So after that the old man named him
+Satan, fur he said it was Satan's trick to keep things
+from growing.  They was some blue and white
+pigeons wasn't scared to come and set on his shoul-
+ders; but you could see the old man really liked
+that crow Satan better'n any of them.
+
+Well, we hung around all afternoon listening to
+the old man talk, and liking him better and better.
+First thing we knowed it was getting along toward
+supper time.  And nothing would do but we must
+stay to supper, too.  We was pinted toward a
+place on the railroad called Smithtown, but when
+we found we couldn't get a train from there till ten
+o'clock that night anyhow, and it was only three
+miles away, we said we'd stay.
+
+After supper we calculated we'd better move.
+But the old man wouldn't hear of us walking that
+three miles.  So about eight o'clock he hitched up
+a mule to a one-hoss wagon, and we jogged along.
+
+They was a yaller moon sneaking up over the
+edge of the world when we started.  It was so low
+down in the sky yet that it threw long shadders
+on the road, and they was thick and black ones, too.
+Because they was a lot of trees alongside the road,
+and the road was narrow, we went ahead mostly
+through the darkness, with here and there patches
+of moonlight splashed onto the ground.  Doctor
+Kirby and Old Man Withers was setting on the
+seat, still gassing away about books and things,
+and I was setting on the suit case in the wagon box
+right behind 'em.  Sam, he was sometimes in the
+back of the wagon.  He had been more'n half
+asleep all afternoon, but now it was night he was
+waked up, the way niggers and cats will do, and
+every once in a while he would get out behind and
+cut a few capers in a moonlight patch, jest fur
+the enjoyment of it, and then run and ketch up
+with the wagon and crawl in agin, fur it was going
+purty slow.
+
+The ground was sandy in spots, and I guess we
+made a purty good load fur Beck, the old mule.
+She stopped, going up a little slope, after we had
+went about a mile from the Witherses'.  Sam says
+he'll get out and walk, fur the wheels was in purty
+deep, and it was hard going.
+
+"Giddap, Beck!" says the old man.
+
+But Beck, she won't.  She don't stand like she
+is stuck, neither, but like she senses danger some-
+wheres about.  A hoss might go ahead into danger,
+but a mule is more careful of itself and never goes
+butting in unless it feels sure they is a way out.
+
+"Giddap," says the old man agin.
+
+But jest then the shadders on both sides of the
+road comes to life.  They wakes up, and moves all
+about us.  It was done so sudden and quiet it was
+half a minute before I seen it wasn't shadders but
+about thirty men had gathered all about us on
+every side.  They had guns.
+
+"Who are you?  What d'ye want?" asts the old
+man, startled, as three or four took care of the
+mule's head very quick and quiet.
+
+"Don't be skeered, Daddy Withers," says a drawly
+voice out of the dark; "we ain't goin' to hurt YOU.
+We got a little matter o' business to tend to with
+them two fellers yo' totin' to town."
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+
+Thirty</i> men with guns would be consider-
+able of a proposition to buck against, so we
+didn't try it.  They took us out of the
+wagon, and they pinted us down the road, steering
+us fur a country schoolhouse which was, I judged
+from their talk, about a quarter of a mile away.
+They took us silent, fur after we found they didn't
+answer no questions we quit asking any.  We
+jest walked along, and guessed what we was up
+against, and why.  Daddy Withers, he trailed along
+behind.  They had tried to send him along home,
+but he wouldn't go.  So they let him foller and
+paid no more heed to him.
+
+Sam, he kept a-talking and a-begging, and
+several men a-telling of him to shut up.  And him
+not a-doing it.  Till finally one feller says very
+disgusted-like:
+
+"Boys, I'm going to turn this nigger loose."
+
+"We'll want his evidence," says another one.
+
+"Evidence!" says the first one.  "What's the
+evidence of a scared nigger worth?"
+
+"I reckon that one this afternoon was consider-
+able scared, when he give us that evidence against
+himself--that is, if you call it evidence."
+
+"A nigger can give evidence against a nigger,
+and it's all right," says another voice--which it
+come from a feller that had a-holt of my wrist on
+the left-hand side of me--"but these are white
+men we are going to try to-night.  The case is too
+serious to take nigger evidence.  Besides, I reckon
+we got all the evidence any one could need.  This
+nigger ain't charged with any crime himself, and
+my idea is that he ain't to be allowed to figure one
+way or the other in this thing."
+
+So they turned Sam loose.  I never seen nor
+hearn tell of Sam since then.  They fired a couple
+of guns into the air as he started down the road,
+jest fur fun, and mebby he is running yet.
+
+The feller had been talking like he was a lawyer,
+so I asts him what crime we was charged with.  But
+he didn't answer me.  And jest then we gets in
+sight of that schoolhouse.
+
+It set on top of a little hill, partially in the moon-
+light, with a few sad-looking pine trees scattered
+around it, and the fence in front broke down.
+Even after night you could see it was a shabby-
+looking little place.
+
+Old Daddy Withers tied his mule to the broken
+down fence.  Somebody busted the front door
+down.  Somebody else lighted matches.  The first
+thing I knowed, we was all inside, and four or five
+dirty little coal oil lamps, with tin reflectors to 'em,
+which I s'pose was used ordinary fur school exhibi-
+tions, was being lighted.
+
+We was waltzed up onto the teacher's platform,
+Doctor Kirby and me, and set down in chairs there,
+with two men to each of us, and then a tall, raw-
+boned feller stalks up to the teacher's desk, and
+raps on it with the butt end of a pistol, and says:
+
+"Gentlemen, this meeting will come to order."
+
+Which they was orderly enough before that,
+but they all took off their hats when he rapped,
+like in a court room or a church, and most of 'em
+set down.
+
+They set down in the school kids' seats, or on top
+of the desks, and their legs stuck out into the aisles,
+and they looked uncomfortable and awkward.  But
+they looked earnest and they looked sollum, too,
+and they wasn't no joking nor skylarking going
+on, nor no kind of rowdyness, neither.  These
+here men wasn't toughs, by any manner of means,
+but the most part of 'em respectable farmers.  They
+had a look of meaning business.
+
+"Gentlemen," says the feller who had rapped,
+"who will you have for your chairman?"
+
+"I reckon you'll do, Will," says another feller
+to the raw-boned man, which seemed to satisfy
+him.  But he made 'em vote on it before he took
+office.
+
+"Now then," says Will, "the accused must have
+counsel."
+
+"Will," says another feller, very hasty, "what's
+the use of all this fuss an' feathers?  You know as
+well as I do there's nothing legal about this.  It's
+only necessary.  For my part--"
+
+"Buck Hightower," says Will, pounding on the
+desk, "you will please come to order."  Which
+Buck done it.
+
+"Now," says the chairman, turning toward
+Doctor Kirby, who had been setting there looking
+thoughtful from one man to another, like he was
+sizing each one up, "now I must explain to the
+chief defendant that we don't intend to lynch him."
+
+He stopped a second on that word LYNCH as if
+to let it soak in.  The doctor, he bowed toward
+him very cool and ceremonious, and says, mocking
+of him:
+
+"You reassure me, Mister--Mister--What is
+your name?"  He said it in a way that would of
+made a saint mad.
+
+"My name ain't any difference," says Will, trying
+not to show he was nettled.
+
+"You are quite right," says the doctor, looking
+Will up and down from head to foot, very slow and
+insulting, "it's of no consequence in the world."
+
+Will, he flushed up, but he makes himself steady
+and cool, and he goes on with his little speech:
+"There is to be no lynching here to-night.  There
+is to be a trial, and, if necessary, an execution."
+
+"Would it be asking too much," says the
+doctor very polite, "if I were to inquire who is
+to be tried, and before what court, and upon what
+charge?"
+
+There was a clearing of throats and a shuffling of
+feet fur a minute.  One old deaf feller, with a red
+nose, who had his hand behind his ear and was
+leaning forward so as not to miss a breath of what
+any one said, ast his neighbour in a loud whisper,
+"How?"  Then an undersized little feller, who
+wasn't a farmer by his clothes, got up and moved
+toward the platform.  He had a bulging-out fore-
+head, and thin lips, and a quick, nervous way
+about him:
+
+"You are to be tried," he says to the doctor,
+speaking in a kind of shrill sing-song that cut your
+nerves in that room full of bottled-up excitement
+like a locust on a hot day. "You are to be tried before
+this self-constituted court of Caucasian citizens--
+Anglo-Saxons, sir, every man of them, whose for-
+bears were at Runnymede!  The charge against
+you is stirring up the negroes of this community
+to the point of revolt.  You are accused, sir, of
+representing yourself to them as some kind of a
+Moses.  You are arraigned here for endangering
+the peace of the county and the supremacy of the
+Caucasian race by inspiring in the negroes the hope
+of equality."
+
+Old Daddy Withers had been setting back by
+the door.  I seen him get up and slip out.  It didn't
+look to me to be any place fur a gentle old poet.
+While that little feller was making that charge
+you could feel the air getting tingly, like it does
+before a rain storm.
+
+Some fellers started to clap their hands like at a
+political rally and to say, "Go it, Billy!"  "That's
+right, Harden!"  Which I found out later Billy
+Harden was in the state legislature, and quite a
+speaker, and knowed it.  Will, the chairman, he
+pounded down the applause, and then he says to
+the doctor, pointing to Billy Harden:
+
+"No man shall say of us that we did not give you
+a fair trial and a square deal.  I'm goin' to appoint
+this gentleman as your counsel, and I'm goin' to
+give you a reasonable time to talk with him in pri-
+vate and prepare your case.  He is the ablest
+lawyer in southwest Georgia and the brightest son
+of Watson County."
+
+The doctor looks kind of lazy and Bill Harden,
+and back agin at Will, the chairman, and smiles
+out of the corner of his mouth.  Then he says,
+sort of taking in the rest of the crowd with his
+remark, like them two standing there pay-
+ing each other compliments wasn't nothing but
+a joke:
+
+"I hope neither of you will take it too much to
+heart if I'm not impressed by your sense of jus-
+tice--or your friend's ability."
+
+"Then," said Will, "I take it that you intend to
+act as your own counsel?"
+
+"You may take it," says the doctor, rousing of
+himself up, "you may take it--from me--that
+I refuse to recognize you and your crowd as a court
+of any kind; that I know nothing of the silly accusa-
+tions against me; that I find no reason at all why I
+should take the trouble of making a defence before
+an armed mob that can only mean one of two things."
+
+"One of two things?" says Will.
+
+"Yes," says the doctor, very quiet, but raising
+his voice a little and looking him hard in the eyes.
+"You and your gang can mean only one of two
+things.  Either a bad joke, or else--"
+
+And he stopped a second, leaning forward in his
+chair, with the look of half raising out of it, so as
+to bring out the word very decided--
+
+"MURDER!"
+
+The way he done it left that there word hanging
+in the room, so you could almost see it and almost
+feel it there, like it was a thing that had to be faced
+and looked at and took into account.  They all
+felt it that-a-way, too; fur they wasn't a sound fur
+a minute.  Then Will says:
+
+"We don't plan murder, and you'll find this
+ain't a joke.  And since you refuse to accept
+counsel--"
+
+Jest then Buck Hightower interrupts him by yell-
+ing out, "I make a motion Billy Harden be prosecut-
+ing attorney, then.  Let's hurry this thing along!"
+And several started to applaud, and call fur Billy
+Harden to prosecute.  But Will, he pounded down
+the applause agin, and says:
+
+"I was about to suggest that Mr. Harden might
+be prevailed upon to accept that task."
+
+"Yes," says the doctor, very gentle and easy.
+"Quite so!  I fancied myself that Mr. Harden came
+along with the idea of making a speech either for
+or against."  And he grinned at Billy Harden in a
+way that seemed to make him wild, though he tried
+not to show it.  Somehow the doctor seemed to be
+all keyed up, instead of scared, like a feller that's
+had jest enough to drink to give him a fighting edge.
+
+"Mr. Chairman," says Billy Harden, flushing
+up and stuttering jest a little, "I b-beg leave to
+d-d-decline."
+
+"What," says the doctor, sort of playing with
+Billy with his eyes and grin, and turning like to
+let the whole crowd in on the joke, "DECLINE?  The
+eminent gentleman declines!  And he is going to
+sit down, too, with all that speech bottled up in
+him!  O Demosthenes!" he says, "you have lost
+your pebble in front of all Greece."
+
+Several grinned at Billy Harden as he set down,
+and three or four laughed outright.  I guess about
+half of them there knowed him fur a wind bag, and
+some wasn't sorry to see him joshed.  But I seen
+what the doctor was trying to do.  He knowed he
+was in an awful tight place, and he was feeling that
+crowd's pulse, so to speak.  He had been talking
+to crowds fur twenty years, and he knowed the
+kind of sudden turns they will take, and how to
+take advantage of 'em.  He was planning and
+figgering in his mind all the time jest what side to
+ketch 'em on, and how to split up the one, solid
+crowd-mind into different minds.  But the little
+bit of a laugh he turned against Billy Harden was
+only on the surface, like a straw floating on a whirl-
+pool.  These men was here fur business.
+
+Buck Hightower jumps up and says:
+
+"Will, I'm getting tired of this court foolishness.
+The question is, Does this man come into this
+county and do what he has done and get out again?
+We know all about him.  He sneaked in here and
+gave out he was here to turn the niggers white--
+that he was some kind of a new-fangled Jesus sent
+especially to niggers, which is blasphemy in itself--
+and he's got 'em stirred up.  They're boilin' and
+festerin' with notions of equality till we're lucky
+if we don't have to lynch a dozen of 'em, like they
+did in Atlanta last summer, to get 'em back into
+their places again.  Do we save ourselves more
+trouble by stringing him up as a warning to the
+negroes?  Or do we invite trouble by turning him
+loose?  Which?  All it needs is a vote."
+
+And he set down agin.  You could see he had
+made a hit with the boys.  They was a kind of a
+growl rolled around the room.  The feelings in
+that place was getting stronger and stronger.  I
+was scared, but trying not to show it.  My fingers
+kept feeling around in my pocket fur something
+that wasn't there.  But my brain couldn't remember
+what my fingers was feeling fur.  Then it come on
+me sudden it was a buckeye I picked up in the woods
+in Indiany one day, and I had lost it.  I ain't super-
+stitious about buckeyes or horse-shoes, but remem-
+bering I had lost it somehow made me feel worse.
+But Doctor Kirby had a good holt on himself; his
+face was a bit redder'n usual, and his eyes was spark-
+ling, and he was both eager and watchful.  When
+Buck Hightower sets down the chairman clears his
+throat like he is going to speak.  But--
+
+"Just a moment," says Doctor Kirby, getting
+on his feet, and taking a step toward the chairman.
+And the way he stopped and stood made everybody
+look at him.  Then he went on:
+
+"Once more," he says, "I call the attention of
+every man present to the fact that what the last
+speaker proposes is--"
+
+And then he let 'em have that word agin, full in
+their faces, to think about--
+
+"MURDER!  Merely murder."
+
+He was bound they shouldn't get away from that
+word and what it stood fur.  And every man there
+DID think, too, fur they was another little pause.
+And not one of 'em looked at another one fur a
+minute.  Doctor Kirby leaned forward from the
+platform, running his eyes over the crowd, and jest
+natcherally shoved that word into the room so hard
+with his mind that every mind there had to take it in.
+
+But as he held 'em to it they come a bang from
+one of the windows.  It broke the charm.  Fur
+everybody jumped.  I jumped myself.  When the
+end of the world comes and the earth busts in the
+middle, it won't sound no louder than that bang
+did.  It was a wooden shutter.  The wind was ris-
+ing outside, and it flew open and whacked agin'
+the building.
+
+Then a big, heavy-set man that hadn't spoke
+before riz up from one of the hind seats, like he had
+heard a dare to fight, and walked slowly down
+toward the front.  He had a red face, which was
+considerable pock-marked, and very deep-set eyes,
+and a deep voice.
+
+"Since when," he says, taking up his stand a
+dozen feet or so in front of the doctor, "since when
+has any civilization refused to commit murder when
+murder was necessary for its protection?"
+
+One of the top glasses of that window was out,
+and with the shutter open they come a breeze through
+that fluttered some strips of dirty-coloured papers,
+fly-specked and dusty and spider-webbed, that
+hung on strings acrost the room, jest below the
+ceiling.  I guess they had been left over from some
+Christmas doings.
+
+"My friend," said the pock-marked man to the
+doctor--and the funny thing about it was he didn't
+talk unfriendly when he said it--"the word you
+insist on is just a WORD, like any other word."
+
+They was a spider rousted out of his web by that
+disturbance among the strings and papers.  He
+started down from above on jest one string of web,
+seemingly spinning part of it out of himself as he
+come, the way they do.  I couldn't keep my eyes
+off'n him.
+
+"Murder," says the doctor, "is a thing."
+
+"It is a WORD," says the other man, "FOR a thing.
+For a thing which sometimes seems necessary.
+Lynching, war, execution, murder--they are all
+words for different ways of wiping out human life.
+Killing sometimes seems wrong, and sometimes
+right.  But right or wrong, and with one word or
+another tacked to it, it is DONE when a community
+wants to get rid of something dangerous to it."
+
+That there spider was a squat, ugly-looking devil,
+hunched up on his string amongst all his crooked
+legs.  The wind would come in little puffs, and
+swing him a little way toward the doctor's head,
+and then toward the pock-marked man's head,
+back and forth and back and forth, between them
+two as they spoke.  It looked to me like he was
+listening to what they said and waiting fur
+something.
+
+"Murder," says the doctor, "is murder--illegal
+killing--and you can't make anything else out of
+it, or talk anything else into it."
+
+It come to me all to oncet that that ugly spider
+was swinging back and forth like the pendulum on
+a clock, and marking time.  I wondered how much
+time they was left in the world.
+
+"It would be none the less a murder," said the
+pock-marked man, "if you were to be hanged after
+a trial in some county court.  Society had been
+obliged to deny the privilege of committing murder
+to the individual and reserve it for the community.
+If our communal sense says you should die, the
+thing is neither better nor worse than if a sheriff
+hanged you."
+
+"I am not to be hanged by a sheriff," says the
+doctor, very cool and steady, "because I have com-
+mitted no crime.  I am not to be killed by you
+because you dare not, in spite of all you say, outrage
+the law to that extent."
+
+And they looked each other in the eyes so long
+and hard that every one else in the schoolhouse
+held their breath.
+
+"DARE not?" says the pock-marked man.  And
+he reached forward slow and took that spider in
+his hand, and crushed it there, and wiped his hand
+along his pants leg.  "Dare not?  YES, BUT WE DARE.
+The only question for us men here is whether we
+dare to let you go free."
+
+"Your defence of lynching," says Doctor Kirby,
+"shows that you, at least, are a man who can think.
+Tell me what I am accused of?"
+
+And then the trial begun in earnest.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+
+The doctor acted as his own lawyer, and
+the pock-marked man, whose name was
+Grimes, as the lawyer agin us.  You could
+see that crowd had made up its mind before-hand,
+and was only giving us what they called a trial to
+satisfy their own conscience.  But the fight was be-
+twixt Grimes and Doctor Kirby the hull way through.
+
+One witness was a feller that had been in the hotel
+at Cottonville the night we struck that place.  We
+had drunk some of his licker.
+
+"This man admitted himself that he was here to
+turn the niggers white," said the witness.
+
+Doctor Kirby had told 'em what kind of medicine
+he was selling.  We both remembered it.  We both
+had to admit it.
+
+The next witness was the feller that run the
+tavern at Bairdstown.  He had with him, fur proof,
+a bottle of the stuff we had brought with us.  He
+told how we had went away and left it there that
+very morning.
+
+Another witness told of seeing the doctor talking
+in the road to that there nigger bishop.  Which any
+one could of seen it easy enough, fur they wasn't
+nothing secret about it.  We had met him by ac-
+cident.  But you could see it made agin us.
+
+Another witness says he lives not fur from that
+Big Bethel church.  He says he has noticed the
+niggers was worked up about something fur several
+days.  They are keeping the cause of it secret.  He
+went over to Big Bethel church the night before, he
+said, and he listened outside one of the windows to
+find out what kind of doctrine that crazy bishop was
+preaching to them.  They was all so worked up,
+and the power was with 'em so strong, and they was
+so excited they wouldn't of hearn an army march-
+ing by.  He had hearn the bishop deliver a message
+to his flock from the Messiah.  He had seen him go
+wild, afterward, and preach an equality sermon.
+That was the lying message the old bishop had took
+to 'em, and that Sam had told us about.  But how
+was this feller to know it was a lie?  He believed in
+it, and he told it in a straight-ahead way that would
+make any one see he was telling the truth as he
+thought it to be.
+
+Then they was six other witnesses.  All had been
+in the gang that lynched the nigger that day.  That
+nigger had confessed his crime before he was lynched.
+He had told how the niggers had been expecting of a
+Messiah fur several days, and how the doctor was
+him.  He had died a-preaching and a-prophesying
+and thinking to the last minute maybe he was going
+to get took up in a chariot of fire.
+
+Things kept looking worse and worse fur us.
+They had the story as the niggers thought it to be.
+They thought the doctor had deliberately repre-
+sented himself as such, instead of which the doc-
+tor had refused to be represented as that there
+Messiah.  More than that, he had never sold a
+bottle of that medicine.  He had flung the idea of
+selling it way behind him jest as soon as he seen
+what the situation really was in the black coun-
+ties.  He had even despised himself fur going into
+it.  But the looks of things was all the other
+way.
+
+Then the doctor give his own testimony.
+
+"Gentlemen," he says, "it is true that I came
+down here to try out that stuff in the bottle there,
+and see if a market could be worked up for it.  It is
+also true that, after I came here and discovered
+what conditions were, I decided not to sell the stuff.
+I didn't sell any.  About this Messiah business I
+know very little more than you do.  The situation
+was created, and I blundered into it.  I sent the
+negroes word that I was not the person they ex-
+pected.  The bishop lied to them.  That is my
+whole story."
+
+But they didn't believe him.  Fur it was jest
+what he would of said if he had been guilty, as
+they thought him.  And then Grimes gets up and
+says:
+
+"Gentlemen, I demand for this prisoner the
+penalty of death.
+
+"He has lent himself to a situation calculated to
+disturb in this county the peaceful domination of the
+black race by the white.
+
+"He is a Northern man.  But that is not against
+him.  If this were a case where leniency were possi-
+ble, it should count for him, as indicating an ig-
+norance of the gravity of conditions which confront
+us here, every day and all the time.  If he were my
+own brother, I would still demand his death.
+
+"Lest he should think my attitude dictated by
+any lingering sectional prejudice, I may tell him what
+you all know--you people among whom I have lived
+for thirty years--that I am a Northern man myself.
+
+"The negro who was lynched to-day might never
+have committed the crime he did had not the wild,
+disturbing dream of equality been stirring in his
+brain.  Every speech, every look, every action
+which encourages that idea is a crime.  In this
+county, where the blacks outnumber us, we must
+either rule as masters or be submerged.
+
+"This man is still believed by the negroes to
+possess some miraculous power.  He is therefore
+doubly dangerous.  As a sharp warning to them he
+must die.  His death will do more toward ending
+the trouble he has prepared than the death of a
+dozen negroes.
+
+"And as God is my witness, I speak and act
+not through passion, but from the dictates of
+conscience."
+
+He meant it, Grimes did.  And when he set down
+they was a hush.  And then Will, the chairman,
+begun to call the roll.
+
+I never been much of a person to have bad dreams
+or nightmares or things like that.  But ever since
+that night in that schoolhouse, if I do have a night-
+mare, it takes the shape of that roll being called.
+Every word was like a spade grating and gritting
+in damp gravel when a grave is dug.  It sounded
+so to me.
+
+"Samuel Palmour, how do you vote?" that chair-
+man would say.
+
+Samuel Palmour, or whoever it was, would hist
+himself to his feet, and he would say something
+like this:
+
+"Death."
+
+He wouldn't say it joyous.  He wouldn't say it
+mad.  He would be pale when he said it, mebby--
+and mebby trembling.  But he would say it like it
+was a duty he had to do, that couldn't be got out
+of.  That there trial had lasted so long they wasn't
+hot blood left in nobody jest then--only cold blood,
+and determination and duty and principle.
+
+"Buck Hightower," says the chairman, "how
+do you vote?"
+
+"Death," says Buck; "death for the man.  But
+say, can't we jest LICK the kid and turn him
+loose?"
+
+And so it went, up one side the room and down
+the other.  Grimes had showed 'em all their duty.
+Not but what they had intended to do it before
+Grimes spoke.  But he had put it in such a way they
+seen it was something with even MORE principle to
+it than they had thought it was before.
+
+"Billy Harden," says the chairman, "how do you
+vote?"  Billy was the last of the bunch.  And most
+had voted fur death.  Billy, he opened his mouth
+and he squared himself away to orate some.  But
+jest as he done so, the door opened and Old Daddy
+Withers stepped in.  He had been gone so long I
+had plumb forgot him.  Right behind him was a
+tall, spare feller, with black eyes and straight
+iron-gray hair.
+
+"I vote," says Billy Harden, beginning of his
+speech, "I vote for death.  The reason upon which
+I base--"
+
+But Doctor Kirby riz up and interrupted him.
+
+"You are going to kill me," he said.  He was pale
+but he was quiet, and he spoke as calm and steady
+as he ever done in his life.  "You are going to kill
+me like the crowd of sneaking cowards that you are.
+And you ARE such cowards that you've talked two
+hours about it, instead of doing it.  And I'll tell
+you why you've talked so much: because no ONE
+of you alone would dare to do it, and every man of
+you in the end wants to go away thinking that the
+other fellow had the biggest share in it.  And no
+ONE of you will fire the gun or pull the rope--you'll
+do it ALL TOGETHER, in a crowd, because each one will
+want to tell himself he only touched the rope, or
+that HIS GUN missed.
+
+"I know you, by God!" he shouted, flushing up
+into a passion--and it brought blood into their
+faces, too--"I know you right down to your roots,
+better than you know yourselves."
+
+He was losing hold of himself, and roaring like a
+bull and flinging out taunts that made 'em squirm.
+If he wanted the thing over quick, he was taking
+jest the way to warm 'em up to it.  But I don't
+think he was figgering on anything then, or had any
+plan up his sleeve.  He had made up his mind he
+was going to die, and he was so mad because he
+couldn't get in one good lick first that he was nigh
+crazy.  I looked to see him lose all sense in a minute,
+and rush amongst them guns and end it in a
+whirl.
+
+But jest as I figgered he was on his tiptoes fur
+that, and was getting up my own sand, he throwed
+a look my way.  And something sobered him.  He
+stood there digging his finger nails into the palms
+of his hands fur a minute, to get himself back.  And
+when he spoke he was sort of husky.
+
+"That boy there," he says.  And then he stops
+and kind of chokes up.  And in a minute he was
+begging fur me.  He tells 'em I wasn't mixed up
+in nothing.  He wouldn't of done it fur himself,
+but he begged fur me.  Nobody had paid much
+attention to me from the first, except Buck High-
+tower had put in a good word fur me.  But some-
+how the doctor had got the crowd listening to him
+agin, and they all looked at me.  It got next to me.
+I seen by the way they was looking, and I felt it in
+the air, that they was going to let me off.
+
+But Doctor Kirby, he had always been my friend.
+It made me sore fur to see him thinking I wasn't
+with him.  So I says:
+
+"You better can that line of talk.  They don't
+get you without they get me, too.  You orter know
+I ain't a quitter.  You give me a pain."
+
+And the doctor and me stood and looked at each
+other fur a minute.  He grinned at me, and all of a
+sudden we was neither one of us much giving a
+whoop, fur it had come to us both at oncet what
+awful good friends we was with each other.
+
+But jest then they come a slow, easy-going
+sort of a voice from the back part of the room.
+That feller that had come in along with Old
+Daddy Withers come sauntering down the middle
+aisle, fumbling in his coat pocket, and speaking
+as he come.
+
+"I've been hearing a great deal of talk about
+killing people in the last few minutes," he says.
+
+Everybody rubbered at him.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+
+There was something sort of careless in his
+voice, like he had jest dropped in to see a
+show, and it had come to him sudden that
+he would enjoy himself fur a minute or two taking
+part in it.  But he wasn't going to get TOO worked
+up about it, either, fur the show might end by mak-
+ing him tired, after all.
+
+As he come down the aisle fumbling in his coat,
+he stopped and begun to slap all his pockets.  Then
+his face cleared, and he dived into a vest pocket.
+Everybody looked like they thought he was going
+to pull something important out of it.  But he
+didn't.  All he pulled out was jest one of these here
+little ordinary red books of cigarette papers.  Then
+he dived fur some loose tobacco, and begun to roll
+one.  I noticed his fingers was long and white and
+slim and quick.  But not excited fingers; only the
+kind that seems to say as much as talking says.
+
+He licked his cigarette, and then he sauntered
+ahead, looking up.  As he looked up the light fell
+full on his face fur the first time.  He had high
+cheek bones and iron-gray hair which he wore
+rather long, and very black eyes.  As he lifted his
+head and looked close at Doctor Kirby, a change
+went over both their faces.  Doctor Kirby's mouth
+opened like he was going to speak.  So did the other
+feller's.  One side of his mouth twitched into
+something that was too surprised to be a grin, and
+one of his black eyebrows lifted itself up at the same
+time.  But neither him nor Doctor Kirby spoke.
+
+He stuck his cigarette into his mouth and turned
+sideways from Doctor Kirby, like he hadn't noticed
+him pertic'ler.  And he turns to the chairman.
+
+"Will," he says.  And everybody listens.  You
+could see they all knowed him, and that they
+all respected him too, by the way they was waiting
+to hear what he would say to Will.  But they was
+all impatient and eager, too, and they wouldn't
+wait very long, although now they was hushing each
+other and leaning forward.
+
+"Will," he says, very polite and quiet, "can I
+trouble you for a match?"
+
+And everybody let go their breath.  Some with a
+snort, like they knowed they was being trifled with,
+and it made 'em sore.  His eyebrows goes up agin,
+like it was awful impolite in folks to snort that-a-
+way, and he is surprised to hear it.  And Will, he
+digs fur a match and finds her and passes her over.
+He lights his cigarette, and he draws a good
+inhale, and he blows the smoke out like it done him
+a heap of good.  He sees something so interesting
+in that little cloud of smoke that everybody else
+looks at it, too.
+
+"Do I understand," he says, "that some one is
+going to lynch some one, or something of that sort?"
+
+"That's about the size of it, colonel," says Will.
+
+"Um!" he says, "What for?"
+
+Then everybody starts to talk all at once, half of
+them jumping to their feet, and making a perfect
+hullabaloo of explanations you couldn't get no sense
+out of.  In the midst of which the colonel takes a
+chair and sets down and crosses one leg over the
+other, swinging the loose foot and smiling very
+patient.  Which Will remembers he is chairman of
+that meeting and pounds fur order.
+
+"Thank you, Will," says the colonel, like getting
+order was a personal favour to him.  Then Billy
+Harden gets the floor, and squares away fur a long-
+winded speech telling why.  But Buck Hightower
+jumps up impatient and says:
+
+"We've been through all that, Billy.  That man
+there has been tried and found guilty, colonel, and
+there's only one thing to do--string him up."
+
+"Buck, _I_ wouldn't," says the colonel, very mild.
+
+But that there man Grimes gets up very sober
+and steady and says:
+
+"Colonel, you don't understand."  And he tells
+him the hull thing as he believed it to be--why
+they has voted the doctor must die, the room warm-
+ing up agin as he talks, and the colonel listening
+very interested.  But you could see by the looks of
+him that colonel wouldn't never be interested so
+much in anything but himself, and his own way of
+doing things.  In a way he was like a feller that
+enjoys having one part of himself stand aside and
+watch the play-actor game another part of himself
+is acting out.
+
+"Grimes," he says, when the pock-marked man
+finishes, "I wouldn't.  I really wouldn't."
+
+"Colonel," says Grimes, showing his knowledge
+that they are all standing solid behind him, "WE
+WILL!"
+
+"Ah," says the colonel, his eyebrows going up,
+and his face lighting up like he is really beginning
+to enjoy himself and is glad he come, "indeed!"
+
+"Yes," says Grimes, "WE WILL!"
+
+"But not," says the colonel, "before we have
+talked the thing over a bit, I hope?"
+
+"There's been too much talk here now," yells
+Buck Hightower, "talk, talk, till, by God, I'm sick
+of it!  Where's that ROPE?"
+
+"But, listen to him--listen to the colonel!" some
+one else sings out.  And then they was another
+hullabaloo, some yelling "no!"  And the colonel, very
+patient, rolls himself another smoke and lights it
+from the butt of the first one.  But finally they
+quiets down enough so Will can put it to a vote.
+Which vote goes fur the colonel to speak.
+
+"Boys," he begins very quiet, "I wouldn't lynch
+this man.  In the first place it will look bad in
+the newspapers, and--"
+
+"The newspapers be d---d!" says some one.
+
+"And in the second place," goes on the colonel,
+"it would be against the law, and--"
+
+"The law be d----d!" says Buck Hightower.
+
+"There's a higher law!" says Grimes.
+
+"Against the law," says the colonel, rising up
+and throwing away his cigarette, and getting inter-
+ested.
+
+"I know how you feel about all this negro busi-
+ness.  And I feel the same way.  We all know that
+we must be the negros' masters.  Grimes there
+found that out when he came South, and the
+idea pleased him so he hasn't been able to talk
+about anything else since.  Grimes has turned into
+what the Northern newspapers think a typical
+Southerner is.
+
+"Boys, this thing of lynching gets to be a habit.
+There's been a negro lynched to-day.  He's the
+third in this county in five years.  They all needed
+killing.  If the thing stopped there I wouldn't care
+so much.  But the habit of illegal killing grows
+when it gets started.
+
+"It's grown on you.  You're fixing to lynch your
+first white man now.  If you do, you'll lynch an-
+other easier.  You'll lynch one for murder and the
+next for stealing hogs and the next because he's
+unpopular and the next because he happens to
+dun you for a debt.  And in five years life will be
+as cheap in Watson County as it is in a New York
+slum where they feed immigrants to the factories.
+You'll all be toting guns and grudges and trying to
+lynch each other.
+
+"The place to stop the thing is where it starts.
+You can't have it both ways--you've got to stand
+pat on the law, or else see the law spit on right
+and left, in the end, and NOBODY safe.  It's
+either law or--"
+
+"But," says Grimes, "there's a higher law than
+that on the statute books.  There's--"
+
+"There's a lot of flub-dub," says the colonel,
+"about higher laws and unwritten laws.  But we've
+got high enough law written if we live up to it.
+There's--"
+
+"Colonel Tom Buckner," says Buck Hightower,
+"what kind of law was it when you shot Ed Howard
+fifteen years ago?  What--"
+
+"You're out of order," says the chairman,
+"Colonel Buckner has the floor.  And I'll remind
+you, Buck Hightower, that, on the occasion you drag
+in, Colonel Buckner didn't do any talking about
+higher laws or unwritten laws.  He sent word to the
+sheriff to come and get him if he dared."
+
+"Boys," says the colonel, "I'm preaching you
+higher doctrine than I've lived by, and I've made
+no claim to be better or more moral than any of
+you.  I'm not.  I'm in the same boat with all of
+you, and I tell you it's up to ALL of us to stop lynch-
+ings in this county--to set our faces against it.
+I tell you--"
+
+"Is that all you've got to say to us, colonel?"
+
+The question come out of a group that had drawed
+nearer together whilst the colonel was talking.
+They was tired of listening to talk and arguments,
+and showed it.
+
+The colonel stopped speaking short when they
+flung that question at him.  His face changed.
+He turned serious all over.  And he let loose jest
+one word:
+
+"NO!"
+
+Not very loud, but with a ring in it that sounded
+like danger.  And he got 'em waiting agin, and
+hanging on his words.
+
+"No!" he repeats, louder, "not all.  I have this
+to say to you--"
+
+And he paused agin, pointing one long white
+finger at the crowd--
+
+"IF YOU LYNCH THIS MAN YOU MUST KILL ME FIRST!"
+
+I couldn't get away from thinking, as he stood
+there making them take that in, that they was some-
+thing like a play-actor about him.  But he was in
+earnest, and he would play it to the end, fur he
+liked the feelings it made circulate through his
+frame.  And they saw he was in earnest.
+
+"You'll lynch him, will you?" he says, a kind of
+passion getting into his voice fur the first time,
+and his eyes glittering.  "You think you will?
+Well, you WON'T!
+
+"You won't because _I_ say NOT.  Do you hear?
+I came here to-night to save him.
+
+"You might string HIM up and not be called to
+account for it.  But how about ME?"
+
+He took a step forward, and, looking from face to
+face with a dare in his eyes, he went on:
+
+"Is there a man among you fool enough to think
+you could kill Tom Buckner and not pay for it?"
+
+He let 'em all think of that for jest another
+minute before he spoke agin.  His face was as white
+as a piece of paper, and his nostrils was working, but
+everything else about him was quiet.  He looked
+the master of them all as he stood there, Colonel
+Tom Buckner did--straight and splendid and
+keen.  And they felt the danger in him, and they
+felt jest how fur he would go, now he was started.
+
+"You didn't want to listen to me a bit ago," he
+said.  "Now you must.  Listen and choose.  You
+can't kill that man unless you kill me too.
+
+"TRY IT, IF YOU THINK YOU CAN!"
+
+He reached over and took from the teacher's
+desk the sheet of paper Will had used to check off
+the name of each man and how he voted.  He held
+it up in front of him and every man looked at it.
+
+"You know me," he says.  "You know I do not
+break my word.  And I promise you that unless you
+do kill me here tonight--yes, as God is my witness,
+I THREATEN you--I will spend every dollar I own and
+every atom of influence I possess to bring each one
+of you to justice for that man's murder."
+
+They knowed, that crowd did, that killing a man
+like Colonel Buckner--a leader and a big man in
+that part of the state--was a different proposition
+from killing a stranger like Doctor Kirby.  The
+sense of what it would mean to kill Colonel Buckner
+was sinking into 'em, and showing on their faces.
+And no one could look at him standing there, with
+his determination blazing out of him, and not under-
+stand that unless they did kill him as well as Doctor
+Kirby he'd do jest what he said.
+
+"I told you," he said, not raising his voice, but
+dropping it, and making it somehow come creeping
+nearer to every one by doing that, "I told you the
+first white man you lynched would lead to other
+lynchings.  Let me show you what you're up
+against to-night.
+
+"Kill the man and the boy here, and you must
+kill me.  Kill me, and you must kill Old Man
+Withers, too."
+
+Every one turned toward the door as he men-
+tioned Old Man Withers.  He had never been very
+far into the room.
+
+"Oh, he's gone," said Colonel Tom, as they
+turned toward the door, and then looked at each
+other.  "Gone home.  Gone home with the name
+of every man present.  Don't you see you'd have
+to kill Old Man Withers too, if you killed me?  And
+then, HIS WIFE!  And then--how many more?
+
+"Do you see it widen--that pool of blood?  Do
+you see it spread and spread?"
+
+He looked down at the floor, like he really seen
+it there.  He had 'em going now.  They showed it.
+
+"If you shed one drop," he went on, "you must
+shed more.  Can't you see it--widening and deep-
+ening, widening and deepening, till you're wading
+knee deep in it--till it climbs to your waists--till
+it climbs to your throats and chokes you?"
+
+It was a horrible idea, the way he played that
+there pool of blood and he shuddered like he felt it
+climbing up himself.  And they felt it.  A few men
+can't kill a hull, dern county and get away with it.
+The way he put it that's what they was up against.
+
+"Now," says Colonel Tom, "what man among
+you wants to start it?"
+
+Nobody moved.  He waited a minute.  Still
+nobody moved.  They all looked at him.  It was
+awful plain jest where they would have to begin.
+It was awful plain jest what it would all end up in.
+And I guess when they looked at him standing there,
+so fine and straight and splendid, it jest seemed
+plumb unpossible to make a move.  There was a
+spirit in him that couldn't be killed.  Doctor Kirby
+said afterward that was what come of being real
+"quality," which was what Colonel Tom was--
+it was that in him that licked 'em.  It was the best
+part of their own selves, and the best part of their
+own country, speaking out of him to them, that done
+it.  Mebby so.  Anyhow, after a minute more of
+that strain, a feller by the door picks up his gun out
+of the corner with a scrape, and hists it to his
+shoulder and walks out.  And then Colonel Tom
+says to Will, with his eyebrow going up, and that
+one-sided grin coming onto his face agin:
+
+"Will, perhaps a motion to adjourn would be in
+order?"
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+
+So many different kinds of feeling had been
+chasing around inside of me that I had
+numb spots in my emotional ornaments
+and intellectual organs.  The room cleared out of
+everybody but Doctor Kirby and Colonel Tom and
+me.  But the sound of the crowd going into the road,
+and their footsteps dying away, and then after
+that their voices quitting, all made but very little
+sense to me.  I could scarcely realize that the dan-
+ger was over.
+
+I hadn't been paying much attention to Doctor
+Kirby while the colonel was making that grand-
+stand play of his'n, and getting away with it.  Doc-
+tor Kirby was setting in his chair with his head sort
+of sunk on his chest.  I guess he was having a hard
+time himself to realize that all the danger was past.
+But mebby it wasn't that--he looked like he might
+really of forgot where he was fur a minute, and
+might be thinking of something that had happened
+a long time ago.
+
+The colonel was leaning up agin the teacher's
+desk, smoking and looking at Doctor Kirby.
+Doctor Kirby turns around toward the colonel.
+
+"You have saved my life," he says, getting up
+out of his chair, like he had a notion to step over and
+thank him fur it, but was somehow not quite sure
+how that would be took.
+
+The colonel looks at him silent fur a second, and
+then he says, without smiling:
+
+"Do you flatter yourself it was because I think
+it worth anything?"
+
+The doctor don't answer, and then the colonel
+says:
+
+"Has it occurred to you that I may have saved
+it because I want it?"
+
+"WANT it?"
+
+"Do you know of any one who has a better right
+to TAKE it than I have?  Perhaps I saved it because
+it BELONGS to me--do you suppose I want any one
+else to kill what I have the best right to kill?"
+
+"Tom," says Doctor Kirby, really puzzled, to
+judge from his actions, "I don't understand what
+makes you say you have the right to take my life."
+
+"Dave, where is my sister buried?" asts Colonel
+Tom.
+
+"Buried?" says Doctor Kirby.  "My God, Tom,
+is she DEAD?"
+
+"I ask you," says Colonel Tom.
+
+"And I ask you," says Doctor Kirby.
+
+And they looked at each other, both wonderized,
+and trying to understand.  And it busted on me
+all at oncet who them two men really was.
+
+I orter knowed it sooner.  When the colonel
+was first called Colonel Tom Buckner it struck me I
+knowed the name, and knowed something about it.
+But things which was my own consarns was attract-
+ing my attention so hard I couldn't remember what
+it was I orter know about that name.  Then I seen
+him and Doctor Kirby knowed each other when they
+got that first square look.  That orter of put me
+on the track, that and a lot of other things that
+had happened before.  But I didn't piece things
+together like I orter done.
+
+It wasn't until Colonel Tom Buckner called him
+"Dave" and ast him about his sister that I seen
+who Doctor Kirby must really be.
+
+HE WAS THAT THERE DAVID ARMSTRONG!
+
+And the brother of the girl he had run off with
+had jest saved his life.  By the way he was talking,
+he had saved it simply because he thought he had
+the first call on what to do with it.
+
+"Where is she?" asts Colonel Tom.
+
+"I ask you," says Doctor Kirby--or David
+Armstrong--agin.
+
+Well, I thinks to myself, here is where Daniel
+puts one acrost the plate.  And I breaks in:
+
+"You both got another guess coming," I says.
+"She ain't buried anywheres.  She ain't even dead.
+She's living in a little town in Indiany called Athens
+--or she was about eighteen months ago."
+
+They both looks at me like they thinks I am crazy.
+
+"What do you know about it?" says Doctor
+Kirby.
+
+"Are you David Armstrong?" says I.
+
+"Yes," says he.
+
+"Well," I says, "you spent four or five days within
+a stone's throw of her a year ago last summer,
+and she knowed it was you and hid herself away
+from you."
+
+Then I tells them about how I first happened to
+hear of David Armstrong, and all I had hearn from
+Martha.  And how I had stayed at the Davises in
+Tennessee and got some more of the same story
+from George, the old nigger there.
+
+"But, Danny," says the doctor, "why didn't you
+tell me all this?"
+
+I was jest going to say that not knowing he was
+that there David Armstrong I didn't think it any
+of his business, when Colonel Tom, he says to
+Doctor Kirby--I mean to David Armstrong:
+
+"Why should you be concerned as to her where-
+abouts?  You ruined her life and then deserted her."
+
+Doctor Kirby--I mean David Armstrong--
+stands there with the blood going up his face into
+his forehead slow and red.
+
+"Tom," he says, "you and I seem to be working
+at cross purposes.  Maybe it would help some if
+you would tell me just how badly you think I
+treated Lucy."
+
+"You ruined her life, and then deserted her,"
+says Colonel Tom agin, looking at him hard.
+
+"I DIDN'T desert her," said Doctor Kirby.  "She
+got disgusted and left ME.  Left me without a chance
+to explain myself.  As far as ruining her life is
+concerned, I suppose that when I married her--"
+
+"Married her!" cries out the colonel.  And David
+Armstrong stares at him with his mouth open.
+
+"My God!  Tom," he says, "did you think
+--?"
+
+And they both come to another standstill.
+And then they talked some more and only got more
+mixed up than ever.  Fur the doctor thinks she has
+left him, and Colonel Tom thinks he has left her.
+
+"Tom," says the doctor, "suppose you let me
+tell my story, and you'll see why Lucy left me."
+
+Him and Colonel Tom had been chums together
+when they went through Princeton, it seems--I
+picked that up from the talk and some of his story
+I learned afterward.  He had come from Ohio in
+the beginning, and his dad had had considerable
+money.  Which he had enjoyed spending of it,
+and when he was a young feller never liked to work
+at nothing else.  It suited him.  Colonel Tom,
+he was considerable like him in that way.  So they
+was good pals when they was to that school together.
+They both quit about the same time.  A couple
+of years after that, when they was both about
+twenty-five or six years old, they run acrost each
+other accidental in New York one autumn.
+
+The doctor, he was there figgering on going to
+work at something or other, but they was so many
+things to do he was finding it hard to make a choice.
+His father was dead by that time, and looking fur
+a job in New York, the way he had been doing it,
+was awful expensive, and he was running short of
+money.  His father had let him spend so much
+whilst he was alive he was very disappointed to
+find out he couldn't keep on forever looking fur work
+that-a-way.
+
+So Colonel Tom says why not come down home
+into Tennessee with him fur a while, and they will
+both try and figger out what he orter go to work at.
+It was the fall of the year, and they was purty good
+hunting around there where Colonel Tom lived,
+and Dave hadn't never been South any, and so he
+goes.  He figgers he better take a good, long vaca-
+tion, anyhow.  Fur if he goes to work that winter
+or the next spring, and ties up with some job that
+keeps him in an office, there may be months and
+months pass by before he has another chance at
+a vacation.  That is the worst part of a job--I
+found that out myself--you never can tell when
+you are going to get shut of it, once you are fool
+enough to start in.
+
+In Tennessee he had met Miss Lucy.  Which
+her wedding to Prent McMakin was billed fur to
+come off about the first of November, jest a month
+away.
+
+"I don't know whether I ever told you or not,"
+says the doctor, "but I was engaged to be married
+myself, Tom, when I went down to your place.
+That was what started all the trouble.
+
+"You know engagements are like vaccina-
+tion--sometimes they take, and sometimes
+they don't.  Of course, I had thought at one
+time I was in love with this girl I was engaged
+to.  When I found out I wasn't, I should have
+told her so right away.  But I didn't.  I
+thought that she would get tired of me after a
+while and turn me loose.  I gave her plenty of
+chances to turn me loose.  I wanted her to
+break the engagement instead of me.  But
+she wouldn't take the hints.  She hung on like an
+Ohio Grand Army veteran to a country post-office.
+About half the time I didn't read her letters, and
+about nineteen twentieths of the time I didn't
+answer them.  They say hell hath no fury like a
+woman scorned.  But it isn't so--it makes them
+all the fonder of you.  I got into the habit of think-
+ing that while Emma might be engaged to me, I
+wasn't engaged to Emma.  Not but what Emma
+was a nice girl, you know, but--
+
+"Well, I met Lucy.  We fell in love with each
+other.  It just happened.  I kept intending to
+write to the other girl and tell her plainly that
+everything was off.  But I kept postponing it.
+It seemed like a deuce of a hard job to tackle.
+
+"But, finally, I did write her.  That was the very
+day Lucy promised to throw Prent McMakin over
+and marry me.  You know how determined all
+your people were that Lucy should marry McMakin,
+Tom.  They had brought her up with the idea
+that she was going to, and, of course, she was bored
+with him for that reason.
+
+"We decided the best plan would be to slip away
+quietly and get married.  We knew it would raise
+a row.  But there was bound to be a row anyhow
+when they found she intended to marry me instead
+of McMakin.  So we figured we might just as well
+be away from there.
+
+"We left your place early on the morning of
+October 31, 1888--do you remember the date,
+Tom?  We took the train for Clarksville, Tennessee,
+and got there about two o'clock that afternoon.
+I suppose you have been in that interesting centre
+of the tobacco industry.  If you have you may
+remember that the courthouse of Montgomery
+County is right across the street from the best hotel.
+I got a license and a preacher without any trouble,
+and we were married in the hotel parlour that
+afternoon.  One of the hotel clerks and the county
+clerk himself were the witnesses.
+
+"We went to Cincinnati and from there to
+Chicago.  There we got rooms out on the South
+Side--Hyde Park, they called it.  And I got me a
+job.  I had some money left, but not enough to buy
+kohinoors and race-horses with.  Beside, I really
+wanted to get to work--wanted it for the first
+time in my life.  You remember young Clayton
+in our class?  He and some other enterprising
+citizens had a building and loan association.  Such
+things are no doubt immoral, but I went to work
+for him.
+
+"We had been in Chicago a week when Lucy
+wrote home what she had done, and begged for-
+giveness for being so abrupt about it.  At least,
+I suppose that is what she wrote.  It was--"
+
+"I remember exactly what she wrote," says
+Colonel Tom.
+
+"I never knew exactly," says the doctor.  "The
+same mail that brought word from you that your
+grandfather had had some sort of a stroke, as a
+consequence of our elopement, brought also two
+letters from Emma.  They had been forwarded
+from New York to Tennessee, and you had for-
+warded them to Chicago.
+
+"Those letters began the trouble.  You see, I
+hadn't told Emma when I wrote breaking off the
+engagement that I was going to get married the
+next day.  And Emma hadn't received my letter,
+or else had made up her mind to ignore it.  Anyhow,
+those letters were regular love-letters.
+
+"I hadn't really read one of Emma's letters for
+months.  But somehow I couldn't help reading
+these.  I had forgotten what a gift for the expres-
+sion of sentiment Emma had.  She fairly revelled
+in it, Tom.  Those letters were simply writhing
+with clinging female adjectives.  They SQUIRMED
+with affection.
+
+"You may remember that Lucy was a rather
+jealous sort of a person.  Right in the midst of her
+alarm and grief and self-reproach over her grand-
+father, and in the midst of my efforts to comfort
+her, she spied the feminine handwriting on those
+two letters.  I had glanced through them hurriedly,
+and laid them on the table.
+
+"Tom, I was in bad.  The dates on them, you
+know, were so RECENT.  I didn't want Lucy to read
+them.  But I didn't dare to ACT as if I didn't want
+her to.  So I handed them over.
+
+"I suppose--to a bride who had only been
+married a little more than a week--and who had
+hurt her grandfather nearly to death in the marry-
+ing, those letters must have sounded rather odd.
+I tried to explain.  But all my explanations only
+seemed to make the case worse for me.  Lucy was
+furiously jealous.  We really had a devil of a row
+before we were through with it.  I tried to tell her
+that I loved no one but her.  She pointed out that
+I must have said much the same sort of thing to
+Emma.  She said she was almost as sorry for Emma
+as she was for herself.  When Lucy got through
+with me, Tom, I looked like thirty cents and felt
+like twenty-five of that was plugged.
+
+"I didn't have sense enough to know that it was
+most of it grief over her grandfather, and nerves and
+hysteria, and the fact that she was only eighteen
+years old and lonely, and that being a bride had a
+certain amount to do with it.  She had told me that
+I was a beast, and made me feel like one; and I
+took the whole thing hard and believed her.  I
+made a fine, five-act tragedy out of a jealous fit
+I might have softened into comedy if I had had
+the wit.
+
+"I wasn't so very old myself, and I hadn't ever
+been married before.  I should have kept my mouth
+shut until it was all over, and then when she began
+to cry I should have coaxed her up and made her
+feel like I was the only solid thing to hang on to
+in the whole world.
+
+"But the bottom had dropped out of the uni-
+verse for me.  She had said she hated me.  I was
+fool enough to believe her.  I went downtown and
+began to drink.  I come home late that night.
+The poor girl had been waiting up for me--waiting
+for hours, and becoming more and more frightened
+when I didn't show up.  She was over her jealous
+fit, I suppose.  If I had come home in good shape,
+or in anything like it, we would have made up then
+and there.  But my condition stopped all that.
+I wasn't so drunk but that I saw her face change
+when she let me in.  She was disgusted.
+
+"In the morning I was sick and feverish.  I was
+more than disgusted with myself.  I was in despair.
+If she had hated me before--and she had said
+she did--what must she do now?  It seemed to
+me that I had sunk so far beneath her that it would
+take years to get back.  It didn't seem worth while
+making any plea for myself.  You see, I was young
+and had serious streaks all through me.  So when
+she told me that she had written home again, and
+was going back--was going to leave me, I didn't
+see that it was only a bluff.  I didn't see that she
+was really only waiting to forgive me, if I gave
+her a chance.  I started downtown to the building
+and loan office, wondering when she would leave,
+and if there was anything I could do to make her
+change her mind.  I must repeat again that I was a
+fool--that I needed only to speak one word, had
+I but known it.
+
+"If I had gone straight to work, everything might
+have come around all right even then.  But I
+didn't.  I had that what's-the-use feeling.  And I
+stopped in at the Palmer House bar to get some-
+thing to sort of pull me together.
+
+"While I was there, who should come up to the
+bar and order a drink but Prent McMakin."
+
+"Yes!" says Colonel Tom, as near excited as
+he ever got.
+
+"Yes," says Armstrong, "nobody else.  We saw
+each other in the mirror behind the bar.  I don't
+know whether you ever noticed it or not, Tom, but
+McMakin's eyes had a way of looking almost like
+cross-eyes when he was startled or excited.  They
+were a good deal too near together at any time.
+He gave me such a look when our eyes met in the
+mirror that, for an instant, I thought that he in-
+tended to do me some mischief--shoot me, you
+know, for taking his bride-to-be away from him,
+or some fool thing like that.  But as we turned
+toward each other I saw he had no intention of
+that sort."
+
+"Hadn't he?" says Colonel Tom, mighty in-
+terested.
+
+"No," says the doctor, looking at Colonel Tom
+very puzzled, "did you think he had?"
+
+"Yes, I did," says the colonel, right thoughtful.
+
+"On the contrary," says Armstrong, "we had a
+drink together.  And he congratulated me.  Made
+me quite a little speech, in fact; one of the flowery
+kind, you know, Tom, and said that he bore me no
+rancour, and all that."
+
+"The deuce he did!" says Colonel Tom, very low,
+like he was talking to himself.  "And then what?"
+
+"Then," says the doctor, "then--let me see--
+it's all a long time ago, you know, and McMakin's
+part in the whole thing isn't really important."
+
+"I'm not so sure it isn't important," says the
+colonel, "but go on."
+
+"Then," says Armstrong, "we had another drink
+together.  In fact, a lot of them.  We got awfully
+friendly.  And like a fool I told him of my quarrel
+with Lucy."
+
+"LIKE a fool," says Colonel Tom, nodding his
+head.  "Go on."
+
+"There isn't much more to tell," says the doctor,
+"except that I made a worse idiot of myself yet,
+and left McMakin about two o'clock in the after-
+noon, as near as I can recollect.  Somewhere about
+ten o'clock that night I went home.  Lucy was
+gone.  I haven't seen her since."
+
+"Dave," says Colonel Tom, "did McMakin
+happen to mention to you, that day, just why he
+was in Chicago?"
+
+"I suppose so," says the doctor.  "I don't know.
+Maybe not.  That was twenty years ago.  Why?"
+
+"Because," says Colonel Tom, very grim and
+quiet, "because your first thought as to his intention
+when he met you in the bar was MY idea also.  I
+thought he went to Chicago to settle with you.
+You see, I got to Chicago that same afternoon."
+
+"The same day?"
+
+"Yes.  We were to have come together.  But
+I missed the train, and he got there a day ahead
+of me.  He was waiting at the hotel for me to
+join him, and then we were going to look you up
+together.  He found you first and I never did
+find you."
+
+"But I don't exactly understand," says the
+doctor.  "You say he had the idea of shooting
+me."
+
+"I don't understand everything myself," says
+Colonel Tom.  "But I do understand that Prent
+McMakin must have played some sort of a two-
+faced game.  He never said a word to me about
+having seen you.
+
+"Listen," he goes on.  "When you and Lucy
+ran away it nearly killed our grandfather.  In fact,
+it finally did kill him.  When we got Lucy's letter
+that told you were in Chicago I went up to bring
+her back home.  We didn't know what we were
+going to do, McMakin and I, but we were both
+agreed that you needed killing.  And he swore
+that he would marry Lucy anyhow, even--"
+
+"MARRY HER!" sings out the doctor, "but we WERE
+married."
+
+"Dave," Colonel Tom says very slow and steady,
+"you keep SAYING you were married.  But it's
+strange--it's right STRANGE about that marriage."
+
+And he looked at the doctor hard and close, like
+he would drag the truth out of him, and the doctor
+met his look free and open.  You would of thought
+Colonel Tom was saying with his look: "You MUST
+tell me the truth."  And the doctor with his was
+answering: "I HAVE told you the truth."
+
+"But, Tom," says the doctor, "that letter she
+wrote you from Chicago must--"
+
+"Do you know what Lucy wrote?" interrupts
+Colonel Tom.  "I remember exactly.  It was sim-
+ply: 'FORGIVE ME.  I LOVED HIM SO.  I AM HAPPY.
+I KNOW IT IS WRONG, BUT I LOVE HIM SO YOU MUST
+FORGIVE ME.'"
+
+"But couldn't you tell from THAT we were married?"
+cries out the doctor.
+
+"She didn't mention it," says Colonel Tom.
+
+"She supposed that her own family had enough
+faith in her to take it for granted," says the doctor,
+very scornful, his face getting red.
+
+"But wait, Dave," says Colonel Tom, quiet and
+cool.  "Don't bluster with me.  There are still a
+lot of things to be explained.  And that marriage
+is one of them.
+
+"To go back a bit.  You say you got to the house
+somewhere around ten o'clock that evening and
+found Lucy gone.  Do you remember the day of
+the month?"
+
+"It was November 14, 1888."
+
+"Exactly," says Colonel Tom.  "I got to Chicago
+at six o'clock of that very day.  And I went at
+once to the address in Lucy's letter.  I got there
+between seven and eight o'clock.  She was gone.
+My thought was that you must have got wind of
+my coming and persuaded her to leave with you in
+order to avoid me--although I didn't see how you
+could know when I would get there, either, when
+I thought it over."
+
+"And you have never seen her since," says Arm-
+strong, pondering.
+
+"I HAVE seen her since," says Colonel Tom, "and
+that is one thing that makes me say your story needs
+further explanation."
+
+"But where--when--did you see her?" asts
+the doctor, mighty excited.
+
+"I am coming to that.  I went back home again.
+And in July of the next year I heard from her."
+
+"Heard from her?"
+
+"By letter.  She was in Galesburg, Illinois,
+if you know where that is.  She was living there
+alone.  And she was almost destitute.  I wrote
+her to come home.  She would not.  But she had
+to live.  I got rid of some of our property in Ten-
+nessee, and took enough cash up there with me to
+fix her, in a decent sort of way, for the rest of her
+life, and put it in the bank.  I was with her there for
+ten days; then I went back home to get Aunt Lucy
+Davis to help me in another effort to persuade her
+to return.  But when I got back North with Aunt
+Lucy she had gone."
+
+"Gone?"
+
+"Yes, and when we returned without her to
+Tennessee there was a letter telling us not to try to
+find her.  We thought--I thought--that she
+might have taken up with you once again."
+
+"But, my God!  Tom," the doctor busts out,
+"you were with her ten days there in Galesburg!
+Didn't she tell you then--couldn't you tell from
+the way she acted--that she had married
+me?"
+
+"That's the odd thing, Dave," says the colonel,
+very slow and thoughtful.  "That's what is so very
+strange about it all.  I merely assumed by my atti-
+tude that you were not married, and she let me
+assume it without a protest."
+
+"But did you ask her?"
+
+"Ask her?  No.  Can't you see that there was
+no reason why I should ask her?  I was sure.  And
+being sure of it, naturally I didn't talk about it to
+her.  You can understand that I wouldn't, can't
+you?  In fact, I never mentioned you to her.  She
+never mentioned you to me."
+
+"You must have mistaken her, Tom."
+
+"I don't think it's possible, Dave," said the
+colonel.  "You can mistake words and explanations
+a good deal easier than you can mistake an atmos-
+phere.  No, Dave, I tell you that there's something
+odd about it--married or not, Lucy didn't BELIEVE
+herself married the last time I saw her."
+
+"But she MUST have known," says the doctor,
+as much to himself as to the colonel.  "She MUST
+have known."  Any one could of told by the way
+he said it that he wasn't lying.  I could see that
+Colonel Tom believed in him, too.  They was both
+sicking their intellects onto the job of figgering out
+how it was Lucy didn't know.  Finally the doctor
+says very thoughtful:
+
+"Whatever became of Prentiss McMakin, Tom?"
+
+"Dead," says Colonel Tom, "quite a while ago."
+
+"H-m," says the doctor, still thinking hard.
+And then looks at Colonel Tom like they was an
+idea in his head.  Which he don't speak her out.
+But Colonel Tom seems to understand.
+
+"Yes," he says, nodding his head.  "I think
+you are on the right track now.  Yes--I shouldn't
+wonder."
+
+Well, they puts this and that together, and they
+agrees that whatever happened to make things hard
+to explain must of happened on that day that
+Prentiss McMakin met the doctor in the bar-room,
+and didn't shoot him, as he had made his brags he
+would.  Must of happened between the time that
+afternoon when Prentiss McMakin left the doctor
+and the time Colonel Tom went out to see his sister
+and found she had went.  Must of happened some-
+how through Prent McMakin.
+
+We goes home with Colonel Tom that night.  And
+the next day all three of us is on our way to Athens,
+Indiany, where I had seen Miss Lucy at.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+
+Fur my part, as the train kept getting further
+and further north, my feelings kept getting
+more and more mixed.  It come to me
+that I might be steering straight fur a bunch of
+trouble.  The feeling that sadness and melancholy
+and seriousness was laying ahead of me kept me
+from really enjoying them dollar-apiece meals on
+the train.  It was Martha that done it.  All this
+past and gone love story I had been hearing about
+reminded me of Martha.  And I was steering
+straight toward her, and no way out of it.  How
+did I know but what that there girl might be expect-
+ing fur to marry me, or something like that?  Not
+but what I was awful in love with her whilst we was
+together.  But it hadn't really set in on me very
+deep.  I hadn't forgot about her right away.  But
+purty soon I had got to forgetting her oftener than
+I remembered her.  And now it wasn't no use talk-
+ing--I jest wasn't in love with Martha no more, and
+didn't have no ambition to be.  I had went around
+the country a good bit, and got intrusted in other
+things, and saw several other girls I liked purty well.
+Keeping steady in love with jest one girl is mighty
+hard if you are moving around a good bit.
+
+But I was considerable worried about Martha.
+She was an awful romanceful kind of girl.  And
+even the most sensible kind is said to be fools about
+getting their hearts broke and pining away and
+dying over a feller.  I would hate to think Martha
+had pined herself sick.
+
+I couldn't shut my eyes to the fact we was en-
+gaged to each other legal, all right.  And if she
+wanted to act mean about it and take it to a
+court it would likely be binding on me.  Then I
+says to myself is she is mean enough to do that I'll be
+derned if I don't go to jail before I marry her,
+and stay there.
+
+And then my conscience got to working inside of
+me agin.  And a picture of her getting thin and not
+eating her vittles regular and waiting and waiting
+fur me to show up, and me never doing it, come to
+me.  And I felt sorry fur poor Martha, and thought
+mebby I would marry her jest to keep her from
+dying.  Fur you would feel purty tough if a girl
+was to get so stuck on you it killed her.  Not that
+I ever seen that really happen, either; but first and
+last there has been considerable talk about it.
+
+It wasn't but what I liked Martha well enough.
+It was the idea of getting married, and staying
+married, made me feel so anxious.  Being married
+may work out all right fur some folks.  But I
+knowed it never would work any with me.  Or not
+fur long.  Because why should I want to be tied
+down to one place, or have a steady job?  That
+would be a mean way to live.
+
+Of course, with a person that was the doctor's
+age it would be different.  He had done his running
+around and would be willing to settle down now, I
+guessed.  That is, if he could get his differences with
+this here Buckner family patched up satisfactory.
+I wondered whether he would be able to or not.
+Him and Colonel Tom were talking constant on the
+train all the way up.  From the little stretches of
+their talk I couldn't help hearing, I guessed each
+one was telling the other all that had happened
+to him in the time that had passed by.  Colonel
+Tom what kind of a life he had lived, and how he had
+married and his wife had died and left him a wid-
+ower without any kids.  And the doctor--it was
+always hard fur me to get to calling him anything
+but Doctor Kirby--how he had happened to start
+out with a good chancet in life and turn into jest
+a travelling fakir.
+
+Well, I thinks to myself now that he has got to be
+that, mebby her and him won't suit so well now,
+even if they does get their differences patched up.
+Fur all the forgiving in the world ain't going to
+change things, or make them no different.  But, so
+long as the doctor appeared to want to find her so
+derned bad, I was awful glad I had been the means
+of getting him and Miss Lucy together.  He had
+done a lot fur me, first and last, the doctor had, and
+I felt like it helped pay him a little.  Though if they
+was to settle down like married folks I would feel
+like a good old sport was spoiled in the doctor,
+too.
+
+We had to change cars at Indianapolis to get to
+that there little town.  We was due to reach it
+about two o'clock in the afternoon.  And the nearer
+we got to the place the nervouser and nervouser all
+three of us become.  And not owning we was.  The
+last hour before we hit the place, I took a drink of
+water every three minutes, I was so nervous.  And
+when we come into the town I was already standing
+out onto the platform.  I wouldn't of been sur-
+prised to find Martha and Miss Lucy down there to
+the station.  But, of course, they wasn't.  Fur
+some reason I felt glad they wasn't.
+
+"Now," I says to them two, as we got off the
+train, "foller me and I will show you the house."
+
+Everybody rubbers at strangers in a country
+town, and wonders why they have come, and what
+they is selling, and if they are mebby going to start
+a new grain elevator, or buy land, or what.  The
+usual ones around the depot rubbered at us, and I
+hearn one geezer say to another:
+
+"See that big feller there?  He was through here
+a year or two ago selling patent medicine."
+
+"You don't say so!" says the other one, like it
+was something important, like a president or a circus
+had come, and his eyes a-bugging out.  And the
+doctor hearn them, too.  Fur some reason or other
+he flushed up and cut a look out of the corner of his
+eye at Colonel Tom.
+
+We went right through the main street and out
+toward the edge of town, by the crick, where Miss
+Lucy's house was.  And, if anything, all of us feel-
+ing nervouser yet.  And saying nothing and not
+looking at each other.  And Colonel Tom rolling
+cigarettes and fumbling fur matches and lighting
+them and slinging them away.  Fur how does any-
+body know how women is going to take even the
+most ordinary little things?
+
+I knowed the way well enough, and where the
+house was, but as we went around the turn in the
+road I run acrost a surprised feeling.  I come onto
+the place where our campfire had been them nights
+we was there.  Looey had drug an old fence post
+onto the fire one night, and the post had only burned
+half up.  The butt end of it, all charred and flaked,
+was still laying in the grass and weeds there.  It
+hit me with a queer feeling--like it was only yester-
+day that fire had been lit there.  And yet I knowed
+it had been a year and a half ago.
+
+Well, it has always been my luck to run into
+things without the right kind of a lie fixed up ahead
+of time.  They was three or four purty good stories
+I had been trying over in my head to tell Martha
+when I seen her.  Any one of them stories might of
+done all right; but I hadn't decided WHICH one to
+use.  And, of course, I run plumb into Martha.
+She was standing by the gate, which was about
+twenty yards from the veranda.  And all four lies
+popped into my head at oncet, and got so mixed up
+with one another there, I seen right off it was useless
+to try to tell anything that sounded straight.  Be-
+sides, when you are in the fix I was in, what can you
+tell a girl anyhow?
+
+So I jest says to her:
+
+"Hullo!"
+
+Martha, she had been fussing around some flower
+bushes with a pair of shears and gloves on.  She
+looks up when I says that, and she sizes us all up
+standing by the gate, and her eyes pops open, and so
+does her mouth, and she is so surprised to see me she
+drops her shears.
+
+And she looks scared, too.
+
+"Is Miss Buckner at home?" asts Colonel Tom,
+lifting his hat very polite.
+
+"Miss B-B-Buckner?" Martha stutters, very
+scared-like, and not taking her eyes off of me to
+answer him.
+
+"Miss Hampton, Martha," I says.
+
+"Y-y-y-es, s-sh-she is," says Martha.  I wondered
+what was the matter with her.
+
+It is always my luck to get left all alone with my
+troubles.  The doctor and the colonel, they walked
+right past us when she said yes, and up toward the
+house, and left her and me standing there.  I
+could of went along and butted in, mebby.  But I
+says to myself I will have the derned thing out here
+and now, and know the worst.  And I was so
+interested in my trouble and Martha that I didn't
+even notice if Miss Lucy met 'em at the door, and
+if so, how she acted.  When I next looked up they
+was all in the house.
+
+"Martha--" I begins.  But she breaks in.
+
+"Danny," she says, looking like she is going to
+cry, "don't l-l-look at me l-l-like that.  If you
+knew ALL you wouldn't blame me.  You--"
+
+"Wouldn't blame you fur what?" I asts her.
+
+"I know it's wrong of me," she says, begging-like.
+
+"Mebby it is and mebby it ain't," I says.  "But
+what is it?"
+
+"But you never wrote to me," she says.
+
+"You never wrote to me," I says, not wanting
+her to get the best of me, whatever it was she might
+be talking about.
+
+"And then HE came to town!--"
+
+"Who?" I asts her.
+
+"Don't you know?" she says.  "The man I am
+going to marry."
+
+When she said that I felt, all of a sudden, like
+when you are broke and hungry and run acrost a
+half dollar you had forgot about in your other pants.
+I was so glad I jumped.
+
+"Great guns!" I says.
+
+I had never really knowed what being glad was
+before.
+
+"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, putting her
+hands in front of her face, "and here you have come
+to claim me for your bride!"
+
+Which showed me why she had looked so scared.
+That there girl had went and got engaged to another
+feller.  And had been laying awake nights suffering
+fur fear I would turn up agin.  And now I had.
+Looey, he always said never to trust a woman!
+
+"Martha," I says, "you ain't acted right with me."
+
+"Oh, Danny, Danny," she says, "I know it!  I
+know it!"
+
+"Some fellers in my place," I says, "would raise
+a dickens of a row."
+
+"I DID love you once," she says, looking at me
+from between her fingers.
+
+"Yes," says I, acting real melancholy, "you did.
+And now you've quit it, they don't seem to me to be
+nothing left to live fur."  Martha, she was an awful
+romanceful girl.  I got the notion that mebby she
+was enjoying her own remorsefulness a little bit.
+I fetched a deep sigh and I says:
+
+"Some fellers would kill theirselves on the spot!"
+
+"Oh!--Oh!--Oh!--" says Martha.
+
+"But, Martha," says I, "I ain't that mean.  I
+ain't going to do that."
+
+That dern girl ackshellay give me a disappointed
+look!  If anything, she was jest a bit TOO romanceful,
+Martha was.
+
+"No," says I, cheering up a little, "I am going
+to do something they ain't many fellers would
+do, Martha.  I'm going to forgive you.  Free
+and fair and open.  And give you back my half of
+that ring, and--"
+
+Dern it!  I had forgot I had lost that half of that
+there ring!  I remembered so quick it stopped me.
+
+"You always kept it, Danny?" she asts me, very
+soft-spoken, so as not to give pain to one so faithful
+and so noble as what I was.  "Let me see it, Danny."
+
+I made like I was feeling through all my pockets
+fur it.  But that couldn't last forever.  I run out
+of pockets purty soon.  And her face begun to show
+she was smelling a rat.  Finally I says:
+
+"These ain't my other clothes--it must be in
+them."
+
+"Danny," she says, "I believe you LOST it."
+
+"Martha," I says, taking a chancet, "you know
+you lost YOUR half!"
+
+She owns up she has lost it a long while ago.
+And when she lost it, she says, she knowed that
+was fate and that our love was omened in under an
+evil star.  And who was she, she says, to struggle
+agin fate?
+
+"Martha," I says, "I'll be honest with you.
+Fate got away with my half too one day when I
+didn't know they was crooks like her sticking
+around."
+
+Well, I seen that girl seen through me then.
+Martha was awful smart sometimes.  And each
+one was so derned tickled the other one wasn't go-
+ing to do any pining away we like to of fell into
+love all over agin.  But not quite.  Fur neither one
+would ever trust the other one agin.  So we felt
+more comfortable with each other.  You ain't
+never comfortable with a person you know is more
+honest than you be.
+
+"But," says Martha, after a minute, "if you didn't
+come back to make me marry you, what does
+Doctor Kirby want to see Miss Hampton about?
+And who was that with him?"
+
+I had been nigh to forgetting the main thing we
+had all come here fur, in my gladness at getting rid
+of any danger of marrying Martha.  But it come to
+me all to oncet I had been missing a lot that must be
+taking place inside that house.  I had even missed
+the way they first looked when she met 'em at the
+door, and I wouldn't of missed that fur a lot.  And
+I seen all to oncet what a big piece of news it
+will be to Martha.
+
+"Martha," I says, "they ain't no Dr. Hartley L.
+Kirby.  The man known as such is David Arm-
+strong!"
+
+I never seen any one so peetrified as Martha was
+fur a minute.
+
+"Yes," says I, "and the other one is Miss Lucy's
+brother.  And they are all three in there straighten-
+ing themselves out and finding where everybody
+gets off at, and why.  One of these here serious
+times you read about.  And you and me are missing
+it all, like a couple of gumps.  How can we hear?"
+
+Martha says she don't know.
+
+"You THINK," I told her.  "We've wasted five
+good minutes already.  I've GOT to hear the rest of
+it.  Where would they be?"
+
+Martha guesses they will all be in the sitting room,
+which has got the best chairs in it.
+
+"What is next to it?  A back parlour, or a bed-
+room, or what?"  I was thinking of how I happened
+to overhear Perfessor Booth and his fambly
+that-a-way.
+
+Martha says they is nothing like that to be
+tried.
+
+"Martha," I says, "this is serious.  This here
+story they are thrashing out in there is the only
+derned sure-enough romanceful story either you
+or me is ever lible to run up against personal in all
+our lives.  It would of been a good deal nicer if
+they had ast us in to see the wind-up of it.  Fur, if
+it hadn't of been fur me, they never would of been
+reunited and rejuvenated the way they be.  But
+some people get stingy streaks with their concerns.
+You think!"
+
+Martha, she says: "Danny, it wouldn't be
+honourable to listen."
+
+"Martha," I tells her, "after the way you and
+me went and jilted each other, what kind of senses
+of honour have WE got to brag about?"
+
+She remembers that the spare bedroom is right
+over the sitting room.  The house is heated with
+stoves in the winter time.  There is a register right
+through the floor of the spare bedroom and the
+ceiling of the sitting room.  Not the kind of a
+register that comes from a twisted-around shaft in
+a house that uses furnace heat.  But jest really a
+hole in the floor, with a cast-iron grating, to let
+the heat from the room below into the one above.
+She says she guesses two people that wasn't so
+very honourable might sneak into the house the
+back way, and up the back stairs, and into the spare
+bedroom, and lay down on their stummicks on the
+floor, being careful to make no noise, and both see
+and hear through that register.  Which we done it.
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+
+I could hear well enough, but at first I couldn't
+see any of them.  But I gathered that Miss
+Lucy was standing up whilst she was talking,
+and moving around a bit now and then.  I seen one
+of her sleeves, and then a wisp of her hair.  Which
+was aggervating, fur I wanted to know what she
+was like.  But her voice was so soft and quiet that
+you kind of knowed before you seen her how she
+orter look.
+
+"Prentiss McMakin came to me that day," she
+was saying, "with an appeal--I hardly know how
+to tell you."  She broke off.
+
+"Go ahead, Lucy," says Colonel Tom's voice.
+
+"He was insulting," she said.  "He had been drink-
+ing.  He wanted me to--to--he appealed to me to
+run off with him.
+
+"I was furious--NATURALLY."  Her voice changed
+as she said it enough so you could feel how furious
+Miss Lucy could get.  She was like her brother
+Tom in some ways.
+
+"I ordered him out of the house.  His answer to
+that was an offer to marry me.  You can imagine
+that I was surprised as well as angry--I was
+perplexed.
+
+"'But I AM married!' I cried.  The idea that any
+of my own people, or any one whom I had known at
+home, would think I wasn't married was too much
+for me to take in all at once.
+
+"'You THINK you are,' said Prentiss McMakin,
+with a smile.
+
+"In spite of myself my breath stopped.  It was
+as if a chilly hand had taken hold of my heart.
+I mean, physically, I felt like that.
+
+"'I AM married,' I repeated, simply.
+
+"I suppose that McMakin had got the story of
+our wedding from YOU."  She stopped a minute.
+The doctor's voice answered:
+
+"I suppose so," like he was a very tired man.
+
+"Anyhow," she went on, "he knew that we went
+first to Clarksville.  He said:
+
+"'You think you are married, Lucy, but you
+are not.'
+
+"I wish you to understand that Prentiss McMakin
+did it all very, very well.  That is my excuse.  He
+acted well.  There was something about him--I
+scarcely know how to put it.  It sounds odd, but
+the truth is that Prentiss McMakin was always a
+more convincing sort of a person when he had been
+drinking a little than when he was sober.  He
+lacked warmth--he lacked temperament.  I suppose
+just the right amount put it into him.  It put the
+devil into him, too, I reckon.
+
+"He told me that you and he, Tom, had been to
+Clarksville, and had made investigations, and that
+the wedding was a fraud.  And he told it with a
+wealth of convincing detail.  In the midst of it he
+broke off to ask to see my wedding certificate.  As
+he talked, he laughed at it, and tore it up, saying
+that the thing was not worth the paper it was on,
+and he threw the pieces of paper into the grate.  I
+listened, and I let him do it--not that the paper
+itself mattered particularly.  But the very fact that
+I let him tear it showed me, myself, that I was
+believing him.
+
+"He ended with an impassioned appeal to me to
+go with him.
+
+"I showed him the door.  I pretended to the
+last that I thought he was lying to me.  But I did
+not think so.  I believed him.  He had done it all
+very cleverly.  You can understand how I might--
+in view of what had happened?"
+
+I wanted to see Miss Lucy--how she looked
+when she said different things, so I could make up
+my mind whether she was forgiving the doctor or
+not.  Not that I had much doubt but what they
+would get their personal troubles fixed up in the
+end.  The iron grating in the floor was held down
+by four good-sized screws, one at each corner.  They
+wasn't no filling at all betwixt it and the iron grating
+that was in the ceiling of the room below.  The
+space was hollow.  I got an idea and took out my
+jack-knife.
+
+"What are you going to do?" whispers Martha.
+
+"S-sh-sh," I says, "shut up, and you'll see."
+
+One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out
+easy enough.  The second one I broke the point off of
+my knife blade on.  Like you nearly always do on
+a screw.  When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:
+
+"What's that?"  He was powerful quick of hear-
+ing, Colonel Tom was.  I laid low till they went on
+talking agin.  Then Martha slides out on tiptoe and
+comes back in three seconds with one of these here
+little screw-drivers they use around sewing-machines
+and the little oil can that goes with it.  I oils them
+screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts
+the grating from the floor careful and lays it careful
+on the rug.
+
+By doing all of which I could get my head and
+shoulders down into that there hole.  And by twist-
+ing my neck a good deal, see a little ways to each
+side into the room, instead of jest underneath the
+grating.  The doctor I couldn't see yet, and only a
+little of Colonel Tom, but Miss Lucy quite plain.
+
+"You mean thing," Martha whispers, "you are
+blocking it up so I can't hear."
+
+"Keep still," I whispers, pulling my head out of
+the hole so the sound wouldn't float downward into
+the room below.  "You are jest like all other
+women--you got too much curiosity."
+
+"How about yourself?" says she.
+
+"Who was it thought of taking the grating off?"
+I whispers back to her.  Which settles her tem-
+porary, but she says if I don't give her a chancet at
+it purty soon she will tickle my ribs.
+
+When I listens agin they are burying that there
+Prent McMakin.  But without any flowers.
+
+Miss Lucy, she was half setting on, half leaning
+against, the arm of a chair.  Which her head was
+jest a bit bowed down so that I couldn't see her
+eyes.  But they was the beginnings of a smile onto
+her face.  It was both soft and sad.
+
+"Well," says Colonel Tom, "you two have wasted
+almost twenty years of life."
+
+"There is one good thing," says the doctor.  "It
+is a good thing that there was no child to suffer by
+our mistakes."
+
+She raised her face when he said that, Miss Lucy
+did, and looked in his direction.
+
+"You call that a good thing?" she says, in a kind
+of wonder.  And after a minute she sighs.  "Per-
+haps," she says, "you are right.  Heaven only
+knows.  Perhaps it WAS better that he died."
+
+"DIED!" sings out the doctor.
+
+And I hearn his chair scrape back, like he had riz
+to his feet sudden.  I nearly busted my neck trying
+fur to see him, but I couldn't.  I was all twisted up,
+head down, and the blood getting into my head from
+it so I had to pull it out every little while.
+
+"Yes," she says, with her eyes wide, "didn't you
+know he died?"  And then she turns quick toward
+Colonel Tom.  "Didn't you tell him--" she
+begins.  But the doctor cuts in.
+
+"Lucy," he says, his voice shaking and croaking
+in his throat, "I never knew there was a child!"
+
+I hears Colonel Tom hawk in HIS throat like a
+man who is either going to spit or else say something.
+But he don't do either one.  No one says anything
+fur a minute.  And then Miss Lucy says agin:
+
+"Yes--he died."
+
+And then she fell into a kind of a muse.  I have
+been myself in the fix she looked to be in then--so
+you forget fur a while where you are, or who is there,
+whilst you think about something that has been in
+the back part of your mind fur a long, long time.
+
+What she was musing about was that child that
+hadn't lived.  I could tell that by her face.  I
+could tell how she must have thought of it,
+often and often, fur years and years, and longed fur
+it, so that it seemed to her at times she could
+almost touch it.  And how good a mother she would
+of been to it.  Some women has jest natcherally
+GOT to mother something or other.  Miss Lucy
+was one of that kind.  I knowed all in a flash, whilst I
+looked at her there, why she had adopted Martha
+fur her child.
+
+It was a wonderful look that was onto her face.
+And it was a wonderful face that look was onto.  I
+felt like I had knowed her forever when I seen her
+there.  Like the thoughts of her the doctor had been
+carrying around with him fur years and years, and
+that I had caught him thinking oncet or twicet, had
+been my thoughts too, all my life.
+
+Miss Lucy, she was one of the kind there's no use
+trying to describe.  The feller that could see her
+that-a-way and not feel made good by it orter have
+a whaling.  Not the kind of sticky, good feeling
+that makes you uncomfortable, like being pestered
+by your conscience to jine a church or quit cussing.
+But the kind of good that makes you forget they is
+anything on earth but jest braveness of heart and
+being willing to bear things you can't help.  You
+knowed the world had hurt her a lot when you seen
+her standing there; but you didn't have the nerve to
+pity her none, either.  Fur you could see she had
+got over pitying herself.  Even when she was in
+that muse, longing with all her soul fur that child
+she had never knowed, you didn't have the nerve
+to pity her none.
+
+"He died," she says agin, purty soon, with that
+gentle kind of smile.
+
+Colonel Tom, he clears his throat agin.  Like
+when you are awful dry.
+
+"The truth is--" he begins.
+
+And then he breaks off agin.  Miss Lucy turns
+toward him when he speaks.  By the strange look
+that come onto her face there must of been some-
+thing right curious in HIS manner too.  I was jest
+simply laying onto my forehead mashing one of my
+dern eyeballs through a little hole in the grating.
+But I couldn't, even that way, see fur enough to one
+side to see how HE looked.
+
+"The truth is," says Colonel Tom, trying it agin,
+"that I--well, Lucy, the child may be dead, but he
+didn't die when you thought he did."
+
+There was a flash of hope flared into her face that
+I hated to see come there.  Because when it died
+out in a minute, as I expected it would have to,
+it looked to me like it might take all her life out
+with it.  Her lips parted like she was going to say
+something with them.  But she didn't.  She jest
+looked it.
+
+"Why did you never tell me this--that there was
+a child?" says the doctor, very eager.
+
+"Wait," says Colonel Tom, "let me tell the story
+in my own way."
+
+Which he done it.  It seems when he had went to
+Galesburg this here child had only been born a few
+days.  And Miss Lucy was still sick.  And the
+kid itself was sick, and liable to die any minute, by
+the looks of things.
+
+Which Colonel Tom wishes that it would die, in
+his heart.  He thinks that it is an illegitimate child,
+and he hates the idea of it and he hates the sight
+of it.  The second night he is there he is setting in
+his sister's room, and the woman that has been
+nursing the kid and Miss Lucy too is in the next
+room with the kid.
+
+She comes to the door and beckons to him, the
+nurse does.  He tiptoes toward her, and she says
+to him, very low-voiced, that "it is all over."
+Meaning the kid has quit struggling fur to live, and
+jest natcherally floated away.  The nurse had
+thought Miss Lucy asleep, but as both her and
+Colonel Tom turn quick toward her bed they see
+that she has heard and seen, and she turns her face
+toward the wall.  Which he tries fur to comfort
+her, Colonel Tom does, telling her as how it is an
+illegitimate child, and fur its own sake it was better
+it was dead before it ever lived any.  Which she
+don't answer of him back, but only stares in a wild-
+eyed way at him, and lays there and looks desperate,
+and says nothing.
+
+In his heart Colonel Tom is awful glad that it is
+dead.  He can't help feeling that way.  And he
+quits trying to talk to his sister, fur he
+suspicions that she will ketch onto the fact that
+he is glad that it is dead.  He goes on into the
+next room.
+
+He finds the nurse looking awful funny, and
+bending over the dead kid.  She is putting a look-
+ing-glass to its lips.  He asts her why.
+
+She says she thought she might be mistaken after
+all.  She couldn't say jest WHEN it died.  It was
+alive and feeble, and then purty soon it showed no
+signs of life.  It was like it hadn't had enough
+strength to stay and had jest went.  I didn't show
+any pulse, and it didn't appear to be breathing.
+And she had watched it and done everything be-
+fore she beckoned to Colonel Tom and told him that
+it was dead.  But as she come back into the room
+where it was she thought she noticed something
+that was too light to be called a real flutter move its
+eyelids, which she had closed down over its eyes.
+It was the ghost of a move, like it had tried to raise
+the lids, or they had tried to raise theirselves, and
+had been too weak.  So she has got busy and
+wrapped a hot cloth around it, and got a drop of
+brandy or two between its lips, and was fighting to
+bring it back to life.  And thought she was doing
+it.  Thought she had felt a little flutter in its chest,
+and was trying if it had breath at all.
+
+Colonel Tom thinks of what big folks the Buckner
+fambly has always been at home.  And how high
+they had always held their heads.  And how none
+of the women has ever been like this before.  Nor
+no disgrace of any kind.  And that there kid, if it
+is alive, is a sign of disgrace.  And he hoped to God,
+he said, it wasn't alive.
+
+But he don't say so.  He stands there and
+watches that nurse fight fur to hold onto the little
+mist of life she thinks now is still into it.  She un-
+buttons her dress and lays the kid against the heat
+of her own breast.  And wills fur it to live, and
+fights fur it to, and determines that it must, and jest
+natcherally tries fur to bullyrag death into going
+away.  And Colonel Tom watching, and wishing
+that it wouldn't.  But he gets interested in that
+there fight, and so purty soon he is hoping both ways
+by spells.  And the fight all going on without a
+word spoken.
+
+But finally the nurse begins fur to cry.  Not be-
+cause she is sure it is dead.  But because she is sure
+it is coming back.  Which it does, slow.
+
+"'But I have told HER that it is dead,'" says Colonel
+Tom, jerking his head toward the other room where
+Miss Lucy is lying.  He speaks in a low voice and
+closes the door when he speaks.  Fur it looks now
+like it was getting strong enough so it might even
+squall a little.
+
+"I don't know what kind of a look there was on
+my face," says Colonel Tom, telling of the story to
+his sister and the doctor, "but she must have seen
+that I was--and heaven help me, but I WAS!--sorry
+that the baby was alive.  It would have been such
+an easy way out of it had it been really dead!
+
+"'She mustn't know that it is living,' I said to
+the nurse, finally," says Colonel Tom, going on with
+his story.  I had been watching Miss Lucy's face
+as Colonel Tom talked and she was so worked up
+by that fight fur the kid's life she was breath-
+less.  But her eyes was cast down, I guess so her
+brother couldn't see them.  Colonel Tom goes on
+with his story:
+
+"'You don't mean--' said the nurse, startled.
+
+"'No!  No!' I said, 'of course--not that!  But--
+why should she ever know that it didn't die?'"
+
+"'It is illegitimate?' asked the nurse.
+
+"'Yes,' I said."  The long and short of it was,
+Colonel Tom went on to tell, that the nurse went out
+and got her mother.  Which the two of them lived
+alone, only around the corner.  And give the child
+into the keeping of her mother, who took it away
+then and there.
+
+Colonel Tom had made up his mind there wasn't
+going to be no bastards in the Buckner fambly.
+And now that Miss Lucy thought it was dead he
+would let her keep on thinking so.  And that would
+be settled for good and all.  He figgered that it
+wouldn't ever hurt her none if she never
+knowed it.
+
+The nurse's mother kept it all that week, and it
+throve.  Colonel Tom was coaxing of his sister to
+go back to Tennessee.  But she wouldn't go.  So
+he had made up his mind to go back and get his
+Aunt Lucy Davis to come and help him coax.  He
+was only waiting fur his sister to get well enough so
+he could leave her.  She got better, and she never
+ast fur the kid, nor said nothing about it.  Which
+was probable because she seen he hated it so.  He
+had made up his mind, before he went back after
+their Aunt Lucy Davis, to take the baby himself and
+put it into some kind of an institution.
+
+"I thought," he says to Miss Lucy, telling of the
+story, "that you yourself were almost reconciled
+to the thought that it hadn't lived."
+
+Miss Lucy interrupted him with a little sound.
+She was breathing hard, and shaking from head to
+foot.  No one would have thought to look at her
+then she was reconciled to the idea that it hadn't
+lived.  It was cruel hard on her to tear her to pieces
+with the news that it really had lived, but had lived
+away from her all these years she had been longing
+fur it.  And no chancet fur her ever to mother it.
+And no way to tell what had ever become of it.  I
+felt awful sorry fur Miss Lucy then.
+
+"But when I got ready to leave Galesburg,"
+Colonel Tom goes on, "it suddenly occurred to me
+that there would be difficulties in the way of putting
+it in a home of any sort.  I didn't know what to do
+with it--"
+
+"What DID you?  What DID you?  WHAT DID YOU?"
+cries out Miss Lucy, pressing her hand to her chest,
+like she was smothering.
+
+"The first thing I did," says Colonel Tom, "was
+to get you to another house--you remember,
+Lucy?"
+
+"Yes, yes!" she says, excited, "and what then?"
+
+"Perhaps I did a very foolish thing," says Colonel
+Tom.
+
+"After I had seen you installed in the new place
+and had bidden you good-bye, I got a carriage and
+drove by the place where the nurse and her mother
+lived.  I told the woman that I had changed my
+mind--that you were going to raise the baby--
+that I was going to permit it.  I don't think she
+quite believed me, but she gave me the baby.  What
+else could she do?  Besides, I had paid her well,
+when I discharged her, to say nothing to you, and to
+keep the baby until I should come for it.  They
+needed money; they were poor.
+
+"I was determined that it should never be heard
+of again.  It was about noon when I left Galesburg.
+I drove all that afternoon, with the baby in a basket
+on the seat of the carriage beside me.  Everybody
+has read in books, since books were first written--
+and seen in newspapers, too--about children being
+left on door steps.  Given an infant to dispose of,
+that is perhaps the first thing that occurs to a per-
+son.  There was a thick plaid shawl wrapped about
+the child.  In the basket, beside the baby, was a
+nursing bottle.  About dusk I had it refilled with
+warm milk at a farmhouse near--"
+
+My head was beginning fur to swim.  I pulled my
+head out of that there hole, and rammed my foot
+into it.  It banged against that grating and loosened
+it.  It busted loose some plaster, which showered
+down into the room underneath.  Miss Lucy, she
+screamed.  And the doctor and Colonel Tom both
+yelled out to oncet:
+
+"Who's that?"
+
+"It's me," I yells, banging that grating agin.
+"Watch out below there!"  And the third lick I
+give her she broke loose and clattered down right
+onto a centre table and spilled over some pho-
+tographs and a vase full of flowers, and bounced off
+onto the floor.
+
+"Look out below," I yells, "I'm coming down!"
+
+I let my legs through first, and swung them so I
+would land to one side of the table, and held by my
+hands, and dropped.  But struck the table a side-
+ways swipe and turned it over, and fell onto the
+floor.  The doctor, he grabbed me by the collar and
+straightened me up, and give me a shake and stood
+me onto my feet.
+
+"What do you mean--" he begins.  But I
+breaks in.
+
+"Now then," I says to Colonel Tom, "did you
+leave that there child sucking that there bottle on
+the doorstep of a blacksmith's house next to his shop
+at the edge of a little country town about twenty
+miles northeast of Galesburg wrapped up in that
+there plaid shawl?"
+
+"I did," says Colonel Tom.
+
+"Then," says I, turning to Miss Lucy, "I can
+understand why I have been feeling drawed to YOU
+fur quite a spell.  I'm him."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis
+
+
+
+
+Note:  I have made the following changes to the text:
+PAGE  LINE  ORIGINAL               CHANGED TO
+  17    28  Primose,               Primrose,
+  41    12  jests looks            jest looks
+  83    14  to,                    too,
+  84     4  jests sets             jest sets
+  89    28  it                     it.
+  99    13  our fur                out fur
+ 121     4  Chieftan.              Chieftain.
+ 121    16  i  it                  if it
+ 160     8  them.                  then.
+ 183    18  sir fo'                sir, fo'
+ 189    16  shedon'                she don'
+ 207    22  purty seen             purty soon
+ 210     5  They way               The way
+ 212     6  pintetdly              pintedly
+ 251     2  Witherses.'            Witherses'.
+ 251    22  toe hurt               to hurt
+ 269     3  "Gentleman,            "Gentlemen,
+ 276    19  'Will,"                "Will,"
+ 282     9  <i>won't!</i>"         <i>won't</i>
+ 288    16  real y                 really
+ 292    10  t ouble.               trouble.
+ 308     1  al right               all right
+ 316     4  I says," they          I says, "they
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis
+
diff --git a/old/dsown10.zip b/old/dsown10.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..7ac643f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/dsown10.zip