“I’m gettin’ to the p’int, and I shall have to take a turn or two more, for it is very affectin’ as you go on.”
He took a turn or two, and returned to his chair, saying, “I guess now I can stan’ it to tell you the rest.”
CHAPTER V.
THE TRAGEDY.
“Next mornin’, about eight o’clock, Mari come to the tarvern to know where Mr. Dalton was, that he didn’t come home.
“‘He did go home,’ says Dot’s ancestor.
“‘He didn’t come home,’ says Mari, ‘and Miss Dalton is dreadfully worried for fear he’s sick. Never slep’ a wink, and kep’ a candle burnin’ all night.’
“I don’t know what put it into his head to think somethin’ was wrong, but he did,—Dot’s ancestor, I mean, and why the plague can’t I think of his name! I know it as well as I do my own. Here, Jeff, you rascal, come here,” he called, as the boy came leaping across the end of the piazza like a young deer. “Go and ask Miss Taylor the name of her ancestor who kep’ the tavern when Mr. Dalton was killed.”
Jeff disappeared with a bound and summersault, while his master continued: “Queer boy that, but smart as a steel trap. He’s descended from Mari, who lived with Miss Dalton. A good boy, but queer motioned,—never stands still. Jumps round like a grasshopper,—turns summersets, one after another, till it makes you dizzy to see him. Reads all the trash he can git hold of about pirates and Injuns runnin’ through the bushes. Told the parson, when he asked him what he was goin’ to be when he grew up, that he s’posed he or’to be a minister, but he’d rather be a robber. Dot thrashed him for that and shut him up in the back chamber without his supper. But, my land, he was out in no time. Clum’ out of the winder,—slid down the lightnin’ rod and went rollin’ off like a hoop on the grass. Here he comes. What did she say, Jeff?”
“She said his name was Joel Butterfield, and she didn’t see what you was borin’ Mr. Mason with that story for,” was Jeff’s reply, as he went hippy-te-hopping away.
“Be I borin’ you?” Uncle Zacheus asked, and Craig replied: “Not in the least. I’m greatly interested, and shall be more so when you get to the pith of the matter. Pray, go on. Mari had come to ask why Mr. Dalton didn’t come home, and Mr. Butterfield, your wife’s ancestor, suspected something wrong. That’s where you left off.”