hing wrong, and it never hurt the
water none; and when I was a kid I wouldn't of took anything fur living
in a house like that.

Oncet, when I was a kid about six years old, Hank come home from the
bar-room. He got to chasing Elmira's cat cause he says it was making
faces at him. The cistern door was open, and Hank fell in. Elmira was
over to town, and I was scared. She had always told me not to fool
around there none when I was a little kid, fur if I fell in there I'd be
a corpse quicker'n scatt.

So when Hank fell in, and I hearn him splash, being only a little
feller, and awful scared because Elmira had always made it so strong,
I hadn't no sort of unbelief but what Hank was a corpse already. So I
slams the trap door shut over that there cistern without looking in,
fur I hearn Hank flopping around down in there. I hadn't never hearn
a corpse flop before, and didn't know but what it might be somehow
injurious to me, and I wasn't going to take no chances.

So I went out and played in the front yard, and waited fur Elmira. But
I couldn't seem to get my mind settled on playing I was a horse, nor
nothing. I kep' thinking mebby Hank's corpse is going to come flopping
out of that cistern and whale me some unusual way. I hadn't never been
licked by a corpse, and didn't rightly know jest what one is, anyhow,
being young and comparitive innocent. So I sneaks back in and sets
all the flatirons in the house on top of the cistern lid. I hearn some
flopping and splashing and spluttering, like Hank's corpse is trying to
jump up and is falling back into the water, and I hearn Hank's voice,
and got scareder yet. And when Elmira come along down the road, she seen
me by the gate a-crying, and she asts me why.

"Hank is a corpse," says I, blubbering.

"A corpse!" says Elmira, dropping her coffee which she was carrying home
from the gineral store and post-office. "Danny, what do you mean?"

I seen I was to blame somehow, and I wisht then I hadn't said nothing
about Hank being a corpse. And I made up my mind I wouldn't say nothing
more. So when she grabs holt of me and asts me agin what did I mean
I blubbered harder, jest the way a kid will, and says nothing else. I
wisht I hadn't set them flatirons on that door, fur it come to me all at
oncet that even if Hank HAS turned into a corpse I ain't got any right
to keep him in that cistern.

Jest then Old Mis' Rogers, which is one of our neighbours, comes by,
while Elmira is shaking me