had
fairly frightened him, they were surely never half so long before. It
seemed to him as if they would reach across the room, through the wall,
and even down to the Howling Wilderness. He twisted them up under the
bench and got them fast there, and was glad of it, for now they would
not and could not run out and rush across the room at the Widow.

But now poor Sandy saw another skeleton. His eyes came upon them
suddenly, in a sort of discovery. It seemed as if he had just found them
out for the first time, and knew them for mortal enemies, and determined
to do away with them at once, and at any sacrifice.

Such hands! had the Widow really been looking at them all this time? the
back of that hand was big and rough as the bark of a tree. That finger
nail had a white rim of dough around it; that thumb nail was as big and
about as dirty as a crevicing spoon! He picked up that hand, thrust it
under him, sat firmly over on that side, and held it down and out of
sight with all his might. The other one lay there, still in the way. It
was uglier than the one he had just slain and hidden away in the bush.

There was dirt enough about the nails to make a small mining claim. He
rolled the hand over and over on his lap, as if it had been somebody's
baby; and a baby with the colic. At last, in a state of desperation, he
rolled it off and let it fall and take care of itself. It hung down at
his side like a great big felon from the scaffold.

It twisted and swung around there as if it had just been hung up by the
neck in the expiation of some awful crime. It felt to Sandy as if it
weighed a ton. He tried to lift it up again, to take care of it, to
nurse it, to turn it over on its stomach, to stroke it, and talk to it,
and pity it, and soothe away its colic, but lo! he could not lift it. He
began to perspire, he was so very warm. It was the warmest time that
Sandy had ever seen. All this time Sandy had sat close by the door, and
not one word had he uttered.

The Widow rose up, laid her work on the table, all the time smiling
sweetly, half sadly, and going up to the fire-place, took from the box
in the corner, pine knot after pine knot, and laid them on the blazing
fire.

"Come, the evening is chilly, will you not sit closer to the fire?"

Sandy sat still as the statue of Moses in the Vatican, but that
abominable felon hanging by the neck at his side kept twisting around
and around and around as if he never would die or be still