He was unslinging himself from the pole now, and his eyes glared and his teeth glistened. My grandfather got up in haste and ran off into the gloomy wood. He stumbled over stones, the brambles tore his clothes, the branches beat his face.
Presently he saw a light and was glad. A minute later he was kneeling by a hearth-side, dazed and bedraggled. The flames leaped and crackled, and he was beginning to get warm and feel a little easy in his mind when he heard a voice shouting, “Andrew Coffey! Andrew Coffey!”
It’s hard for a man to jump after going through all my grandfather had, but jump he did. When he looked around, where should he find himself but in the very cabin in which he had first met Patrick.
“Andrew Coffey! Andrew Coffey! tell me a story,” the voice said.
“Is it a story you want?” my grandfather said, as bold as could be, for he was tired of being frightened. “Well then, here’s one.”
And he told the tale of what had befallen him from first to last that night. The tale was long and he was weary. He must have fallen asleep, for when he awoke he lay on a hillside under the open heavens, and his horse grazed at his side.
XIX—CARELESS MR. BUZZARD
Mr. Turkey Buzzard doesn’t have any sense. You watch him and you will see that what I have said is true.
When the rain pours down he sits on the fence and hunches up his shoulders and draws in his neck and tries to hide his head. There he sits looking so pitiful that you are real sorry for him.
“Never mind,” he says to himself, “when this rain is over I’m going to build a house right off. I’m not going to let the rain pelt me this way again.”