"Indeed, Mrs. Clemens, I thank you very much; but I have some sticking-plaster in my chamber."
And Rich, hastily bidding them good night, went to his room.
When there, he found that the jaws of the trap had cut deeper than he supposed, and the wound began to be stiff and painful. He bound it up, and taking an old boot, cut out the vamp, and was by this means enabled to wear it.
"What shall I do?" said Rich to himself. "I ought to be at the graveyard now. It will be two hours before that old lady will go to sleep, and I never can get out of the house without her knowledge."
Rich's room was in the second story of the L, and the water-spout ran near the window. After waiting half an hour, and finding all was still, Rich, raising the sash as gently as possible, descended by the conductor to the ground, and taking the box from the barn, went limping along in the bright moonlight, the box under one arm, and a shovel in the other hand. The jaws of the trap had bruised the numerous tendons that run along the top of the foot, and every step was a pang.
"I wish I had never seen this confounded leg," said Rich. "If I can only get it where it came from, it's the last thing I'll ever dig up."
CHAPTER XX. GOES FOR WOOL, AND GETS SHORN.
The graveyard to which Rich now directed his steps was the original burying-place of the town; but another having been provided, in a more central location, it had been little used for years, and was overgrown with bushes and sweet fern, an occasional spruce or hemlock assuming almost the dimensions of a tree.