Yallery Brown kept out of sight during the day, but in the gray twilight, after the sun had gone down, Tom often saw the tiny creature hopping around like a Will-of-the-Wisp without a lantern.
At first Tom found it mighty fine to be relieved of his work. He had naught to do and good pay for it; but by and by things began to go wrong. His work continued to be done, but the work of the other lads was all undone. If his buckets were filled theirs were upset; if his tools were sharpened theirs were blunted and spoiled; if his horses were made as clean as daisies, theirs were splashed with muck, and so on.
Day in and day out it was the same. Naturally the lads began to have hard feelings toward Tom, and they would not speak to him or go near him, and they carried tales to the master. So things went from bad to worse.
Tom could not work even if he wished to; the spade would not stay in his hand, the scythe escaped from his grip, and the plow ran away from him. More than once he tried his best to do his tasks so that Yallery Brown would leave him and his fellow laborers alone. But he couldn’t, and he was compelled to sit by and look on and have the cold shoulder turned on him while the uncanny thing was meddling with the others and working for him.
At last matters got so bad that the master would keep Tom no longer, and if he had not discharged him the other lads would have left. They swore they would not stay on the same farm with him. Tom felt badly, for it was a good place; and he was very angry with Yallery Brown who had got him into such trouble.
So he shook his fist in the air and shouted as loud as he could, “Yallery Brown, come from the earth, you scamp, I want you!”
Hardly had the words left his lips when he felt something tweaking his leg behind, and he was pinched so hard that he jumped with the smart of it. He looked down and there was Yallery Brown with his shining hair and wrinkled face, and wicked glinting black eyes.
Tom was in a fine rage, and he would have liked to kick the ugly creature, but he restrained himself and said, “Look here, master, I’ll thank you to leave me alone after this. Do you hear? I want none of your help, and I’ll have nothing more to do with you.”
The horrid thing broke into a screeching laugh, and pointed its brown finger at Tom. “Ho, ho, Tom!” it said, “you have thanked me, my lad, and I told you not to do so.”
“But I don’t want your help,” Tom yelled. “I only want never to see you again, and to have nothing more to do with you. Now go.”