"Und den yer cum too ergin?" queried Clarissa shaking with excitement.
"Naw chile," Joshua answered with gravity, "I haint neber cum too no mo, dat I haint."
Jake had another delusion—that to do your work without makin mistakes "yer must obsarve the consequences."
The old Colonel after he had finished his toilet walked out into the verandah where he observed Jake ambling toward the house and singing in a monotone an old army doggerel of questionable merit,
"He who fights and runs away,
Will live to fight another day,
But he who is in battle slain:
Will never live to fight again."
The regulator walked up the stone steps into the verandah with a leer in his countenance, satan-like in its expression.
Old Jube slunk away with a sidelong glance at the regulator as if he quite agreed with Clarissa that "He wus not a humans, nohow," and coiled himself up for the nap that had been needlessly interrupted at the other end of the verandah.
"Now then sir, how do you propose to proceed in this business?"
"I aint er going to proceed, the percession cums at the latter eend. Now yer just hold yer breath, mister, twill I fix my curlecules, and then you can crack your whip and the percession will start to the cemetery with music by the band."
The regulator filled a doubled barrel army canteen full of gunpowder, and attached to it a fuse that would burn half an hour before exploding. After doing this he said to the Colonel,