got through, and we got
burnt pretty much all over, in places, and eyes put out with the smoke;
because, you see, we didn't want nothing but a crust, and we couldn't
prop it up right, and she would always cave in. But of course we thought
of the right way at last--which was to cook the ladder, too, in the
pie. So then we laid in with Jim the second night, and tore up the sheet
all in little strings and twisted them together, and long before daylight
we had a lovely rope that you could a hung a person with. We let on it
took nine months to make it.

And in the forenoon we took it down to the woods, but it wouldn't go into
the pie. Being made of a whole sheet, that way, there was rope enough
for forty pies if we'd a wanted them, and plenty left over for soup, or
sausage, or anything you choose. We could a had a whole dinner.

But we didn't need it. All we needed was just enough for the pie,
and so we throwed the rest away. We didn't cook none of the pies in the
wash-pan--afraid the solder would melt; but Uncle Silas he had a noble
brass warming-pan which he thought considerable of, because it belonged
to one of his ancesters with a long wooden handle that come over from
England with William the Conqueror in the Mayflower or one of them early
ships and was hid away up garret with a lot of other old pots and things
that was valuable, not on account of being any account, because they
warn't, but on account of them being relicts, you know, and we snaked her
out, private, and took her down there, but she failed on the first pies,
because we didn't know how, but she come up smiling on the last one. We
took and lined her with dough, and set her in the coals, and loaded her
up with rag rope, and put on a dough roof, and shut down the lid, and put
hot embers on top, and stood off five foot, with the long handle, cool
and comfortable, and in fifteen minutes she turned out a pie that was a
satisfaction to look at. But the person that et it would want to fetch a
couple of kags of toothpicks along, for if that rope ladder wouldn't
cramp him down to business I don't know nothing what I'm talking about,
and lay him in enough stomach-ache to last him till next time, too.

Nat didn't look when we put the witch pie in Jim's pan; and we put the
three tin plates in the bottom of the pan under the vittles; and so Jim
got everything all right, and as soon as he was by himself he busted into
the pie and hid the rope ladder inside of hi