“Ho! Ho! who’s interrupting now?” cried Van, bursting into a laugh.
“Hush!” said Jasper, over at Percy, who ducked immediately.
“You’ll see,” said Polly gayly. “Well, so one dark night,—oh! you couldn’t see your hand before your face hardly,—don’t you think, all the twelve splendid rich men got twelve letters—I mean each man got one—saying he was to go off, just as quick as he could go, over to the big house where the minister lived, ’cause he wanted to see him on very important business indeed, and he couldn’t wait a minute. So every single one of those twelve splendid rich men started from his home, and ran as hard as he could. And before he had gone very far, he met a man,—he didn’t see him, it was so dark, but he ran up against him, and they nearly knocked each other over.
“‘Stop, there!’ roared the man, that the man who was running knocked up against. ‘What are you doing, tumbling me down in this fashion?’
“‘Oh! I didn’t mean to,’ said the poor man very humbly; and he couldn’t breathe very well, because, you see, he’d been running so fast, and he’d bumped into the other one so suddenly. ‘I won’t do it again; but the minister, I expect, is sick, so excuse me;’ and he tried to go by.
“‘No, you don’t go any farther,’ roared the other man at him, in a dreadful voice; and he pulled out from under his arm a big bag, and popped it over the head of the poor man who had been running, and then he tumbled him upside down, and shook him around in the bag down into the bottom of it, and then he tied up the neck.”
“O Polly! tied up the man’s neck?” asked Ben.
“No, I mean the neck of the bag,” said Polly. “Then he set the bag, with the man in it, on a big stone by the roadside. ‘Now, there you must stay, till I come for you,’ he said; and he laughed as hard as he could, and hopped off in the darkness.”
“Oh! oh! oh!” cried all the group, with smothered exclamations.