"I understood from something you said, Joseph, that there was a reason for your leaving home suddenly; but I can't believe, my boy, you have done anything wrong."
"An' I haven't, aunt Dorcas; as true as I live, I haven't, though everybody, even Plums, thinks I've been cuttin' a terrible swath! Of course, when that advertisement come out, I had to run away, else they'd carried me to jail—"
"To jail?" aunt Dorcas repeated, in horror. "What advertisement do you mean, Joseph?"
"The one that was in the paper 'bout payin' anybody who'd tell where I was."
"But who wanted to know where you were?"
"The lawyers, of course,—the fellers that advertised."
"Why did they want to find you?" aunt Dorcas asked, in perplexity.
"That's what knocks me silly, 'cause I don't know a thing about it, any more'n you do."
"Did you say the advertisement knocked you silly, Joseph?" and the little woman now looked thoroughly bewildered.
"Course it did, an' it would have paralysed 'most anybody that didn't know what they'd been about."