“The Lord above look down! They got so bad—the owls did—that they tuk the old hens as well as the young chickens. The night I was a tellin’ ’bout, I heard somethin’s s-q-u-a-l-l! s-q-u-a-l-l! and says I: ‘I’ll bet that’s old Speck, that nasty awdacious owl’s got, for I see her go to roost with the chickens up in the plum-tree, forenenst the smoke-house.’
“So I went to whar old Miss Stringer was sleepin’, and says I:
“ ‘Miss Stringer! oh, Miss Stringer! sure’s you’re born, that owl’s got old Speck out’n the plum-tree.’
“Well, old Miss Stringer she turned over ’pon her side like, and says she:
“ ‘What did you say, Miss Stokes?’
“And says I:—”
We began to get very tired, and signified the same to the old lady, and begged her to answer us directly, and without circumlocution.
“The Lord Almighty love your dear heart, honey, I’m tellin’ you as fast I kin. The owls they got worse, and worse; after they’d swept old Speck and all her gang, they went to work on t’others; and Bryant (that’s one of my boys), he ’lowed he’d shoot the pestersome creeturs. And so one night arter that we hearn one holler, and Bryant he tuk the old musket and went out, and sure enough there was owley (as he thought) a sittin’ on the comb of the house, so he blazed away, and down come—what on airth did come down, do you reckon, when Bryant fired?”
“The owl, I suppose.”
“No sich thing; no sich thing; the owl warn’t thar. ’Twas my old house cat came a tumblin’ down spittin’, sputterin’, and scratching and the fur a flyin’ every time she jumped, like you’d busted a feather-bed open. Bryant he said the way he come to shoot the cat, instead of the owl, he seed somethin’ white—”