Part 42 (1/2)

”Why, what else is gone, Sally?”

”Ther's six _candles_ gone?that's what The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas?_you'd_ never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I know”

”Well, Sally, I'e it; I've been re up them holes”

”Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do Matilda Angelina Araminta _Phelps!_”

Whack comes the thiar-boithout fooling around any Just then the nigger woe, and says:

”Missus, dey's a sheet gone”

”A _sheet_ gone! Well, for the land's sake!”

”I'll stop up the sorrowful

”Oh, _do_ shet up!?s'pose the rats took the _sheet_? _where's_ it gone, Lize?”

”Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally She wuz on de clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone: she ain' dah noto an end I _never_ see the beat of it in all my born days A shi+rt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can?”

”Missus,” co yaller wench, ”dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n”

”Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!”

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 weatherher insurrection all by herself, and everybody elsekind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for , because she says:

”It's _just_ as I expected So you had it in your pocket all the tis there, too How'd it get there?”

”I reely don't know, Sally,” he says, kind of apologizing, ”or you knoould tell I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing,to put my Testament in, and it o and see; and if the Testament is where I had it, I'll know I didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid the Testament down and took up the spoon, and?”

”Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the whole kit and biling of ye; and don't coot back my peace of mind”

I'D a heard her if she'd a said it to herself, let alone speaking it out; and I'd a got up and obeyed her if I'd a been dead As as passing through the setting-roole-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked it up and laid it on the , and went out Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

”Well, it ain't no use to send things by _him_ no ood turn with the spoon, anyithout knowing it, and so we'll go and do hi it?stop up his rat-holes”

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 shi+pshape 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 t'other, looking as absent- around, first to one rat-hole and then another, till he'd been to the tallow-drip off of his candle and thinking Then he turns off slow and drea:

”Well, for the life of me I can't remember when I done it I could show her now that I warn't to blao I reckon it wouldn't do no good”