after years."

"Regret nothing," said the boy, as he turned the lid of the cheese box
back and took the knife and sliced off a piece of cheese, and took a few
crackers out of a barrel, and sat down on a soap box by the stove, "You
see Ma was annoyed to death with Pa. He would come home full, when she
had company, and lay down on the sofa and snore, and he would smell like
a distillery. It hurt me to see Ma cry, and I told her I would break Pa
of drinking if she would let me, and she said if I would promise not
to hurt Pa to go ahead, and I promised not to. Then I got my chum and
another boy, quite a big boy, to help, and Pa is all right. We went down
to the place where they sell arms and legs, to folks who have served in
the army, or a saw mill, or a thrashing machine, and lost their limbs,
and we borrowed some arms and legs, and fixed up a dissecting room.
We fixed a long table in the basement, big enough to lay Pa out on you
know, and then we got false whiskers and moustaches, and when Pa came in
the house drunk and laid down on the sofa, and got to sleep we took
him and laid him out on the table, and took some trunk straps, and a
sircingle and strapped him down to the table. He slept right along all
through it, and we had another table with the false arms and legs on,
and we rolled up our sleeves, and smoked pipes, Just like I read that
medical students do when they cut up a man. Well, you'd a dide to see Pa
look at us when he woke up. I saw him open his eyes, and then we began
to talk about cutting up dead men. We put hickory nuts in our mouths
so our voices would sound different, so he wouldn't know us, and I was
telling the other boys about what a time we had cutting up the last man
we bought. I said he was awful tough, and when we had got his legs off
and had taken out his brain, his friends come to the dissecting room
and claimed the body, and we had to give it up, but I saved the legs.
I looked at Pa on the table and he began to turn pale, and he squirmed
around to get up, but found he was fast. I had pulled his shirt up under
his arms, while he was asleep, and as he began to move I took an icicle,
and in the dim light of the candles, that were sitting on the table in
beer bottles, I drew the icicle across Pa's stummick and I said to my
chum, 'Doc, I guess we had better cut open this old duffer and see if
he died from inflamation of the stummick, from hard drinking, as the
coroner said he did.' Pa shuddered all