false alarm.

"Well," he says, "if they'd 'a' ben some, I reckon I'd 'a' got one."

They all laughed, and Bob says:

"Why, Buck, they might have scalped us all, you've been so slow in
coming."

"Well, nobody come after me, and it ain't right. I'm always kept down;
I don't get no show."

"Never mind, Buck, my boy," says the old man, "you'll have show
enough, all in good time, don't you fret about that. Go 'long with you
now, and do as your mother told you."

When we got up-stairs to his room he got me a coarse shirt and a
roundabout and pants of his, and I put them on. While I was at it he
asked me what my name was, but before I could tell him he started to
tell me about a bluejay and a young rabbit he had catched in the woods
day before yesterday, and he asked me where Moses was when the candle
went out. I said I didn't know; I hadn't heard about it before, no
way.

"Well, guess," he says.

"How'm I going to guess," says I, "when I never heard tell of it
before?"

"But you can guess, can't you? It's just as easy."

"_Which_ candle?" I says.

"Why, any candle," he says.

"I don't know where he was," says I; "where was he?"

"Why, he was in the _dark_! That's where he was!"

"Well, if you knowed where he was, what did you ask me for?"

"Why, blame it, it's a riddle, don't you see? Say, how long are you
going to stay here? You got to stay always. We can just have booming
times--they don't have no school now. Do you own a dog? I've got a
dog--and he'll go in the river and bring out chips that you throw in.
Do you like to comb up Sundays, and all that kind of foolishness? You
bet I don't, but ma she makes me. Confound these ole britches! I
reckon I'd better put 'em on, but I'd ruther not, it's so warm. Are
you all ready? All right. Come along, old hoss."

Cold corn-pone, cold corn-beef, butter and buttermilk--that is what
they had for me down there, and there ain't nothing better that ever
I've come across yet. Buck and his ma and all of them smoked cob
pipes, except the nigger woman, which was gone, and the two young
women. They all smoked and talked, and I eat and talked. The young
women had quilts around them, and their hair down their backs. They
all asked me questions, and I told them how pap and me and all the
family was living on a little farm down at the bottom of Arkansaw, and
my sister Mary Ann run off and got married and never was heard of no
more, and Bill went to hunt them and he warn't h