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a corn-pone that was in Jimā€™s pan, and we went along with Nat to see how it would work, and it just worked noble; when Jim bit into it it most mashed all his teeth out; and there warnā€™t ever anything could a worked better. Tom said so himself. Jim he never let on but what it was only just a piece of rock or something like that thatā€™s always getting into bread, you know; but after that he never bit into nothing but what he jabbed his fork into it in three or four places first.

And whilst we was a-standing there in the dimmish light, here comes a couple of the hounds bulging in from under Jimā€™s bed; and they kept on piling in till there was eleven of them, and there warnā€™t hardly room in there to get your breath.  By jings, we forgot to fasten that lean-to door!  The nigger Nat he only just hollered ā€œWitchesā€ once, and keeled over on to the floor amongst the dogs, and begun to groan like he was dying.  Tom jerked the door open and flung out a slab of Jimā€™s meat, and the dogs went for it, and in two seconds he was out himself and back again and shut the door, and I knowed heā€™d fixed the other door too. Then he went to work on the nigger, coaxing him and petting him, and asking him if heā€™d been imagining he saw something again.  He raised up, and blinked his eyes around, and says:

ā€œMars Sid, youā€™ll say Iā€™s a fool, but if I didnā€™t bā€™lieve I see most a million dogs, er devils, er someā€™n, I wisht I may die right heah in dese tracks.  I did, mosā€™ sholy.  Mars Sid, I felt umā€”I felt um, sah; dey was all over me.  Dad fetch it, I jisā€™ wisht I could git my hanā€™s on one er dem witches jisā€™ wunstā€”onā€™y jisā€™ wunstā€”itā€™s all Iā€™d ast.  But mosā€™ly I wisht deyā€™d lemme ā€™lone, I does.ā€

Tom says:

ā€œWell, I tell you what I think.  What makes them come here just at this runaway niggerā€™s breakfast-time?  Itā€™s because theyā€™re hungry; thatā€™s the reason.  You make them a witch pie; thatā€™s the thing for you to do.ā€







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ā€œBut my lanā€™, Mars Sid, howā€™s I gwyne to make ā€™m a witch pie?  I doanā€™ know how to make it.  I hainā€™t ever hearn er sich a thing bā€™foā€™.ā€

ā€œWell, then, Iā€™ll have to make it myself.ā€

ā€œWill you do it, honey?ā€”will you?  Iā€™ll wusshup de grounā€™ undā€™ yoā€™ foot, I will!ā€

ā€œAll right, Iā€™ll do it, seeing itā€™s you, and youā€™ve been good to us and showed us the runaway nigger.  But you got to be mighty careful.  When we come around, you turn your back; and then whatever weā€™ve put in the pan, donā€™t you let on you see it at all.  And donā€™t you look when Jim unloads the panā€”something might happen, I donā€™t know what.  And above all, donā€™t you handle the witch-things.ā€

ā€œHannel ā€˜M, Mars Sid?  What is you a-talkinā€™ ā€™bout?  I wouldnā€™ lay de weight er my finger on um, not fā€™r ten hundā€™d thousā€™n billion dollars, I wouldnā€™t.ā€









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CHAPTER XXXVII.

THAT was all fixed.  So then we went away and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles, and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in, and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and dropped one of them in Aunt Sallyā€™s apron-pocket which was hanging on a chair, and tā€™other we stuck in the band of Uncle Silasā€™s hat, which was on the bureau, because we heard the children say their pa and ma was going to the runaway niggerā€™s house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silasā€™s coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasnā€™t come yet, so we had to wait a little while.

And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and couldnā€™t hardly wait for the blessing; and then she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and cracking the handiest childā€™s head with her thimble with the other, and says:

ā€œIā€™ve hunted high and Iā€™ve hunted low, and it does beat all what has become of your other shirt.ā€

My heart fell down amongst my lungs and livers and things, and a hard piece of corn-crust started down my throat after it and got met on the road with a cough, and was shot across the table, and took one of the children in the eye and curled him up like a fishing-worm, and let a cry out of him the size of a warwhoop, and Tom he turned kinder blue around the gills, and it all amounted to a considerable state of things for about a quarter of a minute or as much as that, and I would a sold out for half price if there was a bidder.  But after that we was all right againā€”it was the sudden surprise of it that knocked us so kind of cold. Uncle Silas he says:

ā€œItā€™s most uncommon curious, I canā€™t understand it.  I know perfectly well I took it off, becauseā€”ā€

ā€œBecause you hainā€™t got but one on.  Just listen at the man!  I know you took it off, and know it by a better way than your wool-gethering memory, too, because it was on the cloā€™s-line yesterdayā€”I see it there myself. But itā€™s gone, thatā€™s the long and the short of it, and youā€™ll just have to change to a red flannā€™l one till I can get time to make a new one. And it ā€™ll be the third Iā€™ve made in two years.  It just keeps a body on the jump to keep you in shirts; and whatever you do manage to do with ā€™m all is moreā€™n I can make out.  A body ā€™d think you would learn to take some sort of care of ā€™em at your time of life.ā€

ā€œI know it, Sally, and I do try all I can.  But it oughtnā€™t to be altogether my fault, because, you know, I donā€™t see them nor have nothing to do with them except when theyā€™re on me; and I donā€™t believe Iā€™ve ever lost one of them off of me.ā€

ā€œWell, it ainā€™t your fault if you havenā€™t, Silas; youā€™d a done it if you could, I reckon.  And the shirt ainā€™t all thatā€™s gone, nuther.  Therā€™s a spoon gone; and that ainā€™t all.  There was ten, and now therā€™s only nine. The calf got the shirt, I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, thatā€™s certain.ā€

ā€œWhy, what else is gone, Sally?ā€

ā€œTherā€™s six candles goneā€”thatā€™s what.  The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they donā€™t walk off with the whole place, the way youā€™re always going to stop their holes and donā€™t do it; and if they warnā€™t fools theyā€™d sleep in your hair, Silasā€”youā€™d never find it out; but you canā€™t lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know.ā€

ā€œWell, Sally, Iā€™m in fault, and I acknowledge it; Iā€™ve been remiss; but I wonā€™t let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.ā€

ā€œOh, I wouldnā€™t hurry; next year ā€™ll do.  Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!ā€

Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any.  Just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage, and says:

ā€œMissus, deyā€™s a sheet gone.ā€







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ā€œA sheet gone!  Well, for the landā€™s sake!ā€

ā€œIā€™ll stop up them holes to-day,ā€ says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.

ā€œOh, do shet up!ā€”sā€™pose the rats took the sheet?  whereā€™s it gone, Lize?ā€

ā€œClah to goodness I hainā€™t no notion, Missā€™ Sally.  She wuz on de cloā€™sline yistiddy, but she done gone:  she ainā€™ dah no moā€™ now.ā€

ā€œI reckon the world is coming to an end.  I never see the beat of it in all my born days.  A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six canā€”ā€

ā€œMissus,ā€ comes a young yaller wench, ā€œdeyā€™s a brass cannelstick missā€™n.ā€

ā€œCler out from here, you hussy, er Iā€™ll take a skillet to ye!ā€

Well, she was just a-biling.  I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.  She kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.  She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

ā€œItā€™s just as I expected.  So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not youā€™ve got the other things there, too.  Howā€™d it get there?ā€

ā€œI reely donā€™t know, Sally,ā€ he says, kind of apologizing, ā€œor you know I would tell.  I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing, meaning to put my Testament in, and it must be so, because my Testament ainā€™t in; but Iā€™ll go and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, Iā€™ll know I didnā€™t put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, andā€”ā€

ā€œOh, for the landā€™s sake!  Give a body a rest!  Go ā€™long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and donā€™t come nigh me again till Iā€™ve got back my peace of mind.ā€

Iā€™D a heard her if sheā€™d a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and Iā€™d a got up and obeyed her if Iā€™d a been dead.  As we was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat, and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and went out.  Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

ā€œWell, it ainā€™t no use to send things by him no more, he ainā€™t reliable.ā€ Then he says:  "But he done us a good turn with the spoon, anyway, without knowing it, and so weā€™ll go and do him one without him knowing itā€”stop up his rat-holes.ā€

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape.  Then we heard steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes the old man, with a candle in one hand and a bundle of stuff in tā€™other, looking as absent-minded as year before last.  He went a mooning around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till heā€™d been to them all.  Then he stood about five minutes, picking tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking.  Then he turns off slow and dreamy towards the stairs, saying:

ā€œWell, for the life of me I canā€™t remember when I done it.  I could show her now that I warnā€™t to blame on account of the rats.  But never mindā€”let it go.  I reckon it wouldnā€™t do no good.ā€

And so he went on a-mumbling up stairs, and then we left.  He was a mighty nice old man.  And always is.

Tom was a good deal bothered about what to do for a spoon, but he said weā€™d got to have it; so he took a think.  When he had ciphered it out he told me how we was to do; then we went and waited around the spoon-basket till

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