“MURDER WILL OUT.”
It was most eleven when Josiah and me got to bed agin. And then jest as I was gettin’ into a drowse, I heerd the cat in the buttery, and I got up to let her out. And that rousted Josiah up, and he thought he heerd the cattle in the garden, and he got up and went out. And there we was a marchin’[marchin’] round most all night.
And if we would get into a nap, Josiah would think it was mornin’, and he would start up and go out to look at the clock. He seemed so afraid we would be belated, and not get to that exertion in time. And there we was on our feet most all night. I lost myself once, for I dreampt that Josiah was a drowndin’, and Deacon Dobbins was on the shore a prayin’ for him. It started me so, that I jist ketched holt of Josiah and hollered. It skairt him awfully, and says he, “What does ail you, Samantha? I haint been asleep before, to-night, and now you have rousted me up for good. I wonder what time it is.”
And then he got out of bed again, and went and looked at the clock. It was half past one, and he said “He didn’t believe we had better go to sleep again, for fear we would be too late for the exertion, and he wouldn’t miss that for nothin’.”
“Exertion!” says I, in a awful cold tone. “I should think we had had exertion enough for one spell.”
SAMANTHA’S DREAM.
But as bad and wore out as Josiah felt bodily, he was all animated in his mind about what a good time he was a goin’ to have. He acted foolish, and I told him so. I wanted to wear my brown and black gingham and a shaker, but Josiah insisted that I should wear a new lawn dress that he had brought me home as a present, and I had jest got made up. So, jest to please him, I put it on, and my best bonnet.
And that man, all I could do and say, would put on a pair of pantaloons I had been a makin’ for Thomas Jefferson. They was gettin’ up a milatary company to Jonesville, and these pantaloons was blue, with a red stripe down the sides—a kind of a uniform. Josiah took a awful fancy to ’em, and says he:
“I will wear ’em, Samantha; they look so dressy.”