He felt bad; he sithed, to think after all I had said and done about it, the Sentinal was licenced, and some of my folks had got drunk. It mortified him dretfully I know, but I wouldn’t say anything to make him feel any worse, and I only says, says I:
“The Nation wouldn’t take my advice, and you see if it don’t sup sorrow for it; you see if it don’t see worse effects from it than Solomon Cypher’s gittin’ drunk and playin’ horse. And if you see me to the next Sentinal, Joseph, you jest tell me if I haint in the right on’t.”
But I hadn’t no time to multiply any more words with him, for the bride groaned out agonizinly, and called on Doodle and his linement in such a heartbreakin’ way, they was enough to draw tears from a soap stun.
But I will pass over my sufferins of mind, body and ears, only sayin’ that they was truly tegus, till at last we stood before the recumbard form of Solomon Cypher a layin’ stretched out on the floor in as uncomfortable a position as I ever sot my eyes on; he looked almost exactly like a sick swine that Josiah had in the spring. But I hope to goodness the swine won’t never hear I said so, if it should, I should be ashamed and apologize to it, for that got sick on sweet whey, which is a far nobler sickness than likker sickness. And then the Lord had made that a brute by nater, and it hadn’t gone to work and made itself so as Solomon had.
But oh! how the bride did weep and cry as she looked down on him, and how heartrendin’ she did call on Doodle, sayin’ if he had lived she wouldn’t have been in that perdickerment; it was a strange time,—curious.
And we left him after leavin’ some money to have him let out jest as quick as he could walk. I didn’t try to do anything for Cornelius Cork or the Editor of the Auger’ses case. I was completely tuckered out; and in the mornin’ I was so lame that I couldn’t hardly stand on my feet. My back was in a awful state; it wasn’t so much a pain as I told Josiah, but there seemed to be a creek a runnin’ down through my back, as curious a feelin’ as I ever felt; and though we hadn’t seen half or a fourth of what we wanted to see, I told Josiah that we must start for home that day; had it not been for the creek runnin’ down my back we should have staid two days longer at least.
Josiah rubbed my back with linement before we started, almost tenderly; but right when he was rubbin’ in the linement the most nobby he says to me: “This creek wouldn’t never have been Samantha, if you hadn’t helped put a bail onto anybody.”
THE END OF OUR TOWER
Says I, “When anybody is preformin’ about a mission like mine, on a tower, and gits hurt; their noble honor, their happy conscience holds ’em up even if their own pardner tries to run ’em down.”
Says I, “Mebby it is all for the best, our goin’ home this mornin’, for that hen is liable to come off now any minute, and I ort to be there.”