and yelling out what did I mean and how did
it happen and had I saw it and where was Hank's corpse?

And Mis' Rogers she says, "What's Danny been doing now, Elmira?" me
being always up to something.

Elmira she turned around and seen her, and she gives a whoop and then
hollers out: "Hank is dead!" and throws her apern over her head and sets
right down in the path and boo-hoos like a baby. And I bellers louder.

Mis' Rogers, she never waited to ast nothing more. She seen she had a
piece of news, and she's bound to be the first to spread it, like they
is always a lot of women wants to be in them country towns. She run
right acrost the road to where the Alexanderses lived. Mis' Alexander,
she seen her coming and unhooked the screen door, and Mis' Rogers she
hollers out before she reached the porch:

"Hank Walters is dead."

And then she went footing it up the street. They was a black plume on
her bunnet which nodded the same as on a hearse, and she was into and
out of seven front yards in five minutes.

Mis' Alexander, she runs acrost the street to where we was, and she
kneels down and puts her arm around Elmira, which was still rocking back
and forth in the path, and she says:

"How do you know he's dead, Elmira? I seen him not more'n an hour ago."

"Danny seen it all," says Elmira.

Mis' Alexander turned to me, and wants to know what happened and how it
happened and where it happened. But I don't want to say nothing about
that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:

"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's
how he cone it," I says.

"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.

"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to oncet.

But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest
bawled some more.

"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis' Alexander. I nodded my head
agin and let it go at that.

"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant
to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not
meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that,
and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, "so
long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's
the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't
had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be
dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neit