"You're moughty right!" responded the matron, solemnly.
Along toward the last Mr. Coulter tip-toed at every stroke. The switch actually screamed through the air. Billy danced and bawled and made all manner of serio-comic faces and contortions.
"Now go, sir," cried the man, finally tossing the frizzled stump of the switch out through the window. "Go now, and next time I'll be bound you water them pigs!"
And, while the finch poured a cataract of melody from the locust tree, Billy went.
Poor boy! that was a terrible thrashing, and to make it worse, it had been promised to him on the evening before, so that he had been dreading it and shivering over it all night!
Now, as he walked through the breakfast room, his sister looked at him in a commiserating way, but on passing through the kitchen he could not catch the eye of his mother.
Finally he stood in the free open air in front of the saddle closet. It was just then that a speckled rooster on the barn yard fence flapped his wings and crowed lustily. A turkey cock was strutting on the grass by the old cherry tree.
Billy opened the door of the closet. "A boy's will is the wind's will, and the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts." Billy peeped into the saddle closet and then cast a glance around him, as if to see if any one was near.
At length, during a pleasant lull in the morning wind, and while the low, tenderly mellow flowing of the river was distinctly audible, and the song of the finch increased in volume, and the bleating of new born lambs in the meadow died in fluttering echoes under the barn, and while the fragrance of apple blooms grew fainter, and while the sun, now flaming just a little above the eastern horizon, launched a shower of yellow splendors over him from head to foot, he took from under his jacket behind a doubled sheep skin with the wool on, which, with an ineffable smile, he tossed into the closet. Then, as the yellow flicker rose rapidly from the grass, Billy walked off, whistling the air of that once popular ballad—
"O give me back my fifteen cents,
And give me back my money," &c.