CHAPTER II.
A HEATHEN MISSIONARY.
Wall, I wuz a-settin’ in my clean settin’-room on a calm twilight, engaged in completin’ my preperations—in fact, I wuz jest a-puttin’ the finishin’ touches on one of Josiah’s nightcaps and mine.
I put cat stitch round the front of hisen, a sort of a dark red cat.
When all to once I hearn a knock at the west door. I had thought as I wuz a-settin’ a-sewin’ what a beautiful sunset it wuz. The west jest glowed with light that streamed over and lit up the hull sky. All wuz calm in the east, and a big moon wuz jest risin’ from the back of Balcom’s Hill. It wuz shaped a good deal like a boat, and I laid down my sheep’s-head nightcap and set still and watched it, as it seemed moored off behind the evergreens that stood tall and silent and dark, as if to guard Jonesville and the world aginst the gold boat that wuz a-sailin’ in from some onknown harbor. But it come on stiddy, and as if it had to come.
I felt queer.
And jest at that minute I hearn the knock at the west door.
A dark figger that riz up like a strange picter aginst the sunset.
And I went and opened it, and as I did the west wuz flamin’ so with light that it most blinded me at first; but when I got my eyesight agin I see a-standin’ between me and that light a dark figger that riz up like a strange picter aginst the sunset.