ever told me you was here; told me to come, and he’d show me a lot of water-moccasins. If anything happens he ain’t mixed up in it. He can say he never seen us together, and it ’ll be the truth.”

I don’t want to talk much about the next day. I reckon I’ll cut it pretty short. I waked up about dawn, and was a-going to turn over and go to sleep again when I noticed how still it was — didn’t seem to be anybody stirring. That warn’t usual. Next I noticed that Buck was up and gone. Well, I gets up, a-wondering, and goes down-stairs — nobody around; everything as still as a mouse.

Just the same outside. Thinks I, what does it mean? Down by the woodpile I comes across my Jack, and says:

“What’s it all about?”