ch of
sycamores right back of Tom's uncle Silas's tobacker field on the river
road, a lonesome place.

We set and talked a long time about his chances, and Tom said he was
all right if the pals struck up the river instead of down, but it wasn't
likely, because maybe they knowed where he was from; more likely they
would go right, and dog him all day, him not suspecting, and kill him
when it come dark, and take the boots. So we was pretty sorrowful.

CHAPTER V. A TRAGEDY IN THE WOODS

WE didn't get done tinkering the machinery till away late in the
afternoon, and so it was so close to sundown when we got home that we
never stopped on our road, but made a break for the sycamores as tight
as we could go, to tell Jake what the delay was, and have him wait till
we could go to Brace's and find out how things was there. It was getting
pretty dim by the time we turned the corner of the woods, sweating and
panting with that long run, and see the sycamores thirty yards ahead of
us; and just then we see a couple of men run into the bunch and heard
two or three terrible screams for help. "Poor Jake is killed, sure,"
we says. We was scared through and through, and broke for the tobacker
field and hid there, trembling so our clothes would hardly stay on; and
just as we skipped in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into
the bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men and took out up
the road as tight as they could go, two chasing two.

We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened for more sounds, but
didn't hear none for a good while but just our hearts. We was thinking
of that awful thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed like
being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold shudders. The moon
come a-swelling up out of the ground, now, powerful big and round and
bright, behind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison bars,
and the black shadders and white places begun to creep around, and it
was miserable quiet and still and night-breezy and graveyardy and scary.
All of a sudden Tom whispers:

"Look!--what's that?"

"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by surprise that way. I'm 'most
ready to die, anyway, without you doing that."

"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of the sycamores."

"Don't, Tom!"

"It's terrible tall!"

"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's--"

"Keep still--it's a-coming this way."

He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough to whisper. I