I got my bownarrow and laid down on the floor and took a good aim at one of the burglars. I hit him in the leg, and he said, "Ow! ow! I've run a thorn mornamile into my leg."
Then I gave the other fellow an arrow, and he said, "My goodness this place is full of thorns, there's one in my leg too."
Then they moved back a little and I began to shoot as fast as ever I could. I hit them every time, and they were frightened to death. The fellow with the thing like a squash dropped it on the ground and the other fellow jumped on it just as I hit him in the cheek and smashed it all to pieces. You can just believe that they did not stay in our yard very long. They started for the front gate on a run, yelling "Ow! ow!" and I am sorry to say using the worst kind of swear-words. The noise woke up father and he lit the gas and I saw the two wretches in the street picking the arrows out of each other but they ran off as soon as they saw the light.
Father says that they were not burglars at all, but were only two idiots that had come to serenade Sue; but when I asked him what serenading was he said it was far worse than burglary, so I know the men were the worst kind of robbers. I found a broken guitar in the yard the next morning, and there wasn't anything in it that would explode, but it would have been very easy for the robbers to have filled it with something that would have blown the house to atoms. I suppose they preferred to put it in a guitar so that if they met anybody nobody would suspect anything.
Neither mother nor Sue showed any gratitude to me for saving their lives, though father did say that for once that boy had showed a little sense.
When Mr. Travers came that evening and I told him about it he said, "Jimmy! there's such a thing as being just a little too smart."
I don't know what he meant, but I suppose he was a little cross, for he had hurt himself some way—he wouldn't tell me how—and had court-plaster on his cheek and on his hands and walked as if his legs were stiff. Still, if a man doesn't feel well he needn't be rude.