"It's so, for I seed it. It's layin' down over in the hollow by 'tater creek, where the ole clay root is, an' its jist about to d——."
"S-s-h!"
The child caught a glimpse of the face and was struck mute. And darkness stole athwart the earth, but the morrow's sun drove it away. Never, however, did any sun or any season chase from the heart of little Rose the shadow that was the memory of the man who died in that cabin.
Stealing a Conductor.
He shambled into the bar-room of the hotel at Thorntown, a Boone County village, and, with a bow and a hearty "how-de do to you all," took the only vacant chair. He scratched a match and lighted his pipe. "Now we'll be bored with some sort of a long-winded story," whispered some to others of the loungers present. "Never knowed him to fail," said a lank fellow, almost loud enough for the subject to hear. "He's our travelled man," added a youth, who winked as if he were extremely intelligent and didn't mind letting folks know it.
The man himself whiffed away carelessly at his pipe, now and then raising one eye higher than the other, to take a sort of side survey of the persons present. That eye was not long in settling upon me, and after a short, searching look, gleamed in a well pleased way. He was a stout formed man of about fifty years, dressed rather seedily, and wearing a plug hat of enormous height, the crown of which was battered into the last degree of grotesqueness. He got right up, and, dragging his chair behind him, came over and settled close down in front of me.
"Stranger here, a'n't you?"
"Yes, sir."