“Praise the Lord!” shouted Mrs. Waterman.
“But your son didn't come.”
“Didn't he—what's the matter?”
“He's dead.”
“Dead? Irving dead—no, no! that can't be.”
“But he didn't come, and he must be dead.”
Mrs. Waterman headed a procession—a dozen or more—of men, women and children, who came up the street on a run. The news that Waterman was dead spread like wildfire, and soon a large number of villager's were at our house to hear all about it. Their alarm was changed to rejoicing when I assured them that Waterman was alive and well.
My little sister when she heard mother inquiring about Irving, and my reply that he had not returned with me, took it for granted that he was dead, and so hastened to inform Mrs. Waterman.
Late that night when the family separated to “catch a little sleep before chore time,” as father put it, and I sank down into mother's best feather bed, and tried to remember the thrilling events in which I had participated since Waterman, Taylor and I started for that “shooting match,” I felt that, after all,—
“Be it ever so humble,
There's no place like home.”