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??He kept me with him all the time, and I never got a chance to run off. We
lived in that old cabin, and he always locked the door and put the key under his
head, nights. He had a gun which he had stole, I reckon, and we fished and
hunted, "and that was what we lived on. Every little while he locked me in and
went down to the store, three miles, to the ferry, and traded fish and game for
whisky and fetched it home and got drunk and had a good time, and licked me.
The widow she found out where I was, by-and-by, and she sent a man over to try
to get hold of me, but pap drove him off with the gun, and it warn't long after
that till I was used to being where I was, and liked it, all but the cowhide part.
It was kind of lazy and jolly, laying off comfortable all day, smoking and
fishing, and no books nor study. Two months or more run along, and my
clothes got to be all rags and dirt, and I didn't see how I'd ever got to like it so well
at the widow's, where you had to wash, and eat on a plate, and comb up, and go to
bed and get up regular, and be forever bothering over a book and have old Miss
Watson pecking at you all the' time. I didn't want to go back no more. I had
stopped cussing, because the widow didn't like it; but now I took to it again be-
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