Chapter 40 - Page 2

setting-room. My, but there was a crowd
there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them had a
gun. I was most powerful sick, and slunk to a chair
and set down. They was setting around, some of them
talking a little, in a low voice, and all of them fidgety
and uneasy, but trying to look like they warn't; but I
knowed they was, because they was always taking off
their hats, and putting them on, and scratching their
heads, and changing their seats, and fumbling with
their buttons. I warn't easy myself, but I didn't take
my hat off, all the same.

I did wish Aunt Sally would come, and get done
with me, and lick me, if she wanted to, and let me get
away and tell Tom how we'd overdone this thing, and
what a thundering hornet's-nest we'd got ourselves
into, so we could stop fooling around straight off, and
clear out with Jim before these rips got out of patience
and come for us.

At last she come and begun to ask me questions,
but I COULDN'T answer them straight, I didn't know
which end of me was up; because these men was in
such a fidget now that some was wanting to start right
NOW and lay for them desperadoes, and saying it warn't
but a few minutes to midnight; and others was trying
to get them to hold on and wait for the sheep-signal;
and here was Aunty pegging away at the questions,
and me a-shaking all over and ready to sink down in
my tracks I was that scared; and the place getting
hotter and hotter, and the butter beginning to melt and
run down my neck and behind my ears; and pretty
soon, when one of them says, "I'M for going and
getting in the cabin FIRST and right NOW, and catching
them when they come," I most dropped; and a streak
of butter come a-trickling down my forehead, and
Aunt Sally she see it, and turns white as a sheet, and
says:

"For the land's sake, what IS the matter with the
child? He's got the brain-fever as shore as you're
born, and they're oozing out!"

And everybody runs to see, and she snatches off my
hat, and out comes the bread and what was left of the
butter, and she grabbed me, and hugged me, and
says:

"Oh, what a turn you did give me! and how glad
and grateful I am it ain't no worse; for luck's against
us, and it never rains but it pours, and when I see that
truck I thought we'd lost you, for I knowed by the
color and all it was just like your brains would be if --
Dear, dear, whyd'nt you TELL me that was what you'd
been down there for, I wouldn't a cared. Now cler
out to bed, and don't lemme see no more of you till
morning!"

I was up stairs in a second, and down the lightning-
rod in another one, and shinning through the dark for
the lean-to. I couldn't hardly get my words