“You lie, sir!” says Josiah, springin’ up to his feet. “There wuzn’t no widder there, and I never was there.”
“Never was where?” says I, in a awful voice; for curiosity and various other emotions was a hunchin’ me, as hard as ever a woman was hunched by ’em.
“I never was anywhere! I never was to their meetin’s, nor to nowhere else.”
“Where wuz you, then?” says I, in that same strange voice.
“I told you I wuzn’t nowhere, didn’t I?” he yelled out in fearful axents.
But Elder Judas Wart went right on a talkin’ to me, stiddy as fate, and as hard to be turned round as she.
“He seemed then to look at the Widder”—
“I never looked at a widder! I never see none! I never see a widder in my life!”
Says I: “Josiah Allen, be calm!”
“I tell you I won’t be calm! And I tell you there hain’t no widders there—nor hain’t never been any—nor nowhere else—nor I never heard of any.”