en by. You
wants to keep 'way fum de water as much as you kin, en don't run no
resk, 'kase it's down in de bills dat you's gwyne to git hung."

When I lit my candle and went up to my room that night there sat
pap--his own self!

CHAPTER V

I had shut the door to. Then I turned around, and there he was. I used
to be scared of him all the time, he tanned me so much. I reckoned I
was scared now, too; but in a minute I see I was mistaken--that is,
after the first jolt, as you may say, when my breath sort of hitched,
he being so unexpected; but right away after I see I warn't scared of
him worth bothring about.

He was most fifty, and he looked it. His hair was long and tangled and
greasy, and hung down, and you could see his eyes shining through like
he was behind vines. It was all black, no gray; so was his long,
mixed-up whiskers. There warn't no color in his face, where his face
showed; it was white; not like another man's white, but a white to
make a body sick, a white to make a body's flesh crawl--a tree-toad
white, a fish-belly white. As for his clothes--just rags, that was
all. He had one ankle resting on t'other knee; the boot on that foot
was busted, and two of his toes stuck through, and he worked them now
and then. His hat was laying on the floor--an old black slouch with
the top caved in, like a lid.

I stood a-looking at him; he set there a-looking at me, with his chair
tilted back a little. I set the candle down. I noticed the window was
up; so he had clumb in by the shed. He kept a-looking me all over. By
and by he says:

"Starchy clothes--very. You think you're a good deal of a big-bug,
_don't_ you?"

"Maybe I am, maybe I ain't," I says.

"Don't you give me none o' your lip," says he. "You've put on
considerable many frills since I been away. I'll take you down a peg
before I get done with you. You're educated, too, they say--can read
and write. You think you're better'n your father, now, don't you,
because he can't? _I'll_ take it out of you. Who told you you might
meddle with such hifalut'n foolishness, hey?--who told you you could?"

"The widow. She told me."

"The widow, hey?--and who told the widow she could put in her shovel
about a thing that ain't none of her business?"

"Nobody never told her."

"Well, I'll learn her how to meddle. And looky here--you drop that
school, you hear? I'll learn people to bring up a boy to put on airs
over his own father and let on to be better'n