again in the afternoon; and my mother knew why!

It was the last time I was ever put in that cellar. Miss Rubie found
another method of punishment; and I think I can say truthfully it was
the last time I ever took sweetmeats without leave. I did other wrong
things in plenty, but that I could never do again. When mother said I
might go to the box and get "half a dozen raisins," I got half a
dozen, and not a handful. Those solemn words rang in my ears,--"Thou,
God, seest me,"--just as Miss Rubie had spoken them in her low, sweet
tones.

For days I dared not meet aunt Persis's eye, but she treated me just
the same, often loading me down with pennyroyal and spearmint to take
home to mother. I did not know she was near-sighted, and had not seen
me drinking her thoroughwort. It was the first medicine of hers I had
ever taken, and that bitter taste in my mouth decided me, upon
reflection, that she _was_ crazy. As it proved, I was not very far
wrong.

There had been something the matter with her wits for two or three
years, and she was growing queerer and queerer. People began to wonder
what made her want to look at their tongues so much. She said now if
she met people on her way to church, "Please, put out your tongue;"
and sometimes said it on the very church steps. This was queer; but
they did not know how much queerer she was at home. We children could
have told how she came into the school-room and felt all our pulses,
but we thought Miss Rubie would be sorry to have us tell.

Her little boy Zed, about four years old, had to take her dreadful
medicines, of course, for medicine was the very thing auntie was crazy
about. He carried some of his doses into school to drink at recess,
and we all pitied him. Sometimes he ate dry senna and raisins mixed on
a plate, and we teased away the raisins, and he had to chew the senna
"bare." He cried then, and said we ought to help eat that too, and we
did. I thought it had a crazy taste, like the thoroughwort, and was
sorry Zed had a liver inside him, and wished that his mother hadn't
found it out.

Miss Rubie was very good and patient with us, but we began to dread to
go to school. I overheard Tempy Ann say to Polly Whiting,--

"The story is, that Mrs. Adams (aunt Persis) steamed her own mother
out of the world."

"You don't say so!" said Polly. "How long since?"

"About two years ago. The poor old lady sailed off very easy, with a
jug of hot water close to her nose."

That