"Be quick, then, and tell no lies!"
The poor man looked around at his captors in the starlight, stooping dejectedly, and rubbing his bent knees.
"I ain't to blame—I'll tell ye that to begin with. I've been jest knocked about, from post to pillar, and from pillar to post, till I don't know who's my friends and who ain't. I reckon more ain't than is!" added he, dismally.
"That's neither here nor there!" said Stackridge. "Where's Hapgood? that's what I want to know."
"Ye see," said Dan, endeavoring to collect his wits (you would have thought they were in his kneepans, and he was industriously rubbing them up), "Ropes sent me to tote the kittle home, and when I got back here, I be durned if they wasn't all gone, schoolmaster and all."
"But what had they done to him?"
"I don't know, I'm shore! That's what I was a comin' back fur to see. He let me down when I was hung up on the rail, and helped me home; and so I says to myself, says I, 'Why shouldn't I do as much by him?' so I come back, and found him gone."
"What was in the kittle?" Stackridge took him by the throat.
"O, don't go fur to layin' it to me, and I'll tell ye! Thar'd been tar in the kittle! It had been used to give him a coat. That's the fact, durn me if it ain't! They put it on with the broom—my broom—they made me bring my own broom, that's the everlastin' truth! made me do it myself, and spile my wife's best broom into the bargain!" And Pepperill sobbed.
"You put on the tar?"