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"Goodness??gracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a??"

"Fraid to live! -- why, I was that scared I das'nt hardly go to bed, or get up, or

lay down, or set down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the very -- why, good-

ness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight

come, last night. I hope to gracious if I warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the

family! I was just to that pass, I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more.

It looks foolish enough, now, in the day-time; but I says to myself, there's my

two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to good-

ness I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and locked 'em in! I did. And any-

body would. Because, you know, when you get scared, that way, and it keeps run-

ning on, and getting worse and worse, all the time, and your wits gets to addling,

and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by-and-by you think to your-

self, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and

you." She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her

head around slow, and when her eye lit on me -- I got up and took a walk.

Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room

this morning, if I go out to one side and study over it a little. So I done it. But

I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me. And when it was late in the day, the

people all went, and then I come in and told her the noise and shooting waked

up me and "Sid," and the door was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we

went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't

never want to try that no more. And then I went on and told her all what I

told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all

right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a

pretty harum-scarum lot, as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm

hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was

alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done.

So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a

brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What has become

of that boy?" ssssssssss

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

ssssssssss

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