They said, “no, they hadn’t.”
But Celestine Wilkin’s little girl, who had come with her grandpa and grandma Gowdy, spoke up, and says she:
“I seen him goin’ off towards the woods. He acted dretful strange, too; he seemed to be a walkin’ off sideways.”
“Had the sufferin’s he had undergone made him delerious?” says I to myself; and then I started off on the run towards the woods, and old Miss Bobbet, and Miss Gowdy, and Sister Bamber, and Deacon Dobbins’es wife all rushed after me.
Oh, the agony of them two or three minutes! my mind so distracted with fourbodin’s, and the presperation and sweat a pourin’ down. But all of a sudden, on the edge of the woods, we found him. Miss Gowdy weighin’ a little less than me, mebby 100 pounds or so, had got a little ahead of me. He sot backed up against a tree, in a awful cramped position, with his left leg under him. He looked dretful uncomfortable. But when Miss Gowdy hollered out:
“Oh, here you be. We have been skairt about you. What is the matter?”
He smiled a dretful sick smile, and says he:
“Oh, I thought I would come out here and meditate a spell. It was always a real treat to me to meditate.”
A DISCOURAGED EXCURSIONIST.