"My Star-spangled Banner has met with her decease, Ketury."
"Indeed! How very sad!"
"Yes. She has met with her decease. Under very peculiar circumstances,
Ketury."
"Oh!" said Ketury, hunting for her own handkerchief; finding three in her pocket, she brought them all into requisition.
"And I feel it my duty to inquire," said Miss Humdrum, "whether it may happen that you know anything about the event, Ketury."
"I?" said Keturah, weeping, "I didn't know she was dead even! Dear Miss
Humdrum, you are indeed afflicted."
"But I feel compelled to say," pursued Miss Humdrum, eying this wretched hypocrite severely, "that my girl Jemimy did hear somebody fire a gun or a cannon or something out in your garden last night, and she scar't out of her wits, and my poor cat found cold under the hogshead this morning, Ketury."
"Miss Humdrum," said Keturah, "I cannot, in justice to myself, answer such insinuations, further than to say that Amram never allows the gun to go out of his own room. The cannon we keep in the cellar."
"Oh!" said Miss Humdrum, with horrible suspicion in her eyes. "Well, I hope you haven't it on your conscience, I'm sure. Good morning."
It had been the ambition of Keturah's life to see a burglar. The second of the memorable nights referred to crowned this ambition by not only one burglar, but two. She it was who discovered them, she who frightened them away, and nobody but she ever saw them. She confesses to a natural and unconquerable pride in them. It came about on this wise:—