and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says:
“You been down cellar?”
“Yes’m.”
“What you been doing down there?”
“Noth’n.”
“ Noth’n! ”
“No’m.”
“Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?”
“I don’t know ’m.”
“You don’t know ? Don’t answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you been doing down there.”
“I hain’t been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have.”
I reckoned she’d let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I s’pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn’t yardstick straight; so she says, very decided:
“You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come. You been up to something you no business to, and I lay I’ll find out what it is before I’m done with you.”
So she went away as I opened the door and walked into the setting-room. My, but there was a crowd there! Fifteen farmers, and every one of them