On entering the farm house he was introduced to the farmer's wife, and four small tow-headed children, with the remark:
"Fly round, 'Riah; hyar's a man all the way frum New Yurk City agoin' to St. Lowis; an' I'm turrible peckish, which I reckon he is too," at which 'Riah also said "I declar!" and the four tow-headed children stood with open mouths and looked it, though they did not say so.
At the table the farmer turned to Ben, somewhat to the latter's consternation, and asked:
"Strangier, will you say a blessin'?"
Ben might have recited some Homeric ode, but a simple blessing left him high and dry on the shoals of ignorance, and he had to decline.
The good man came near saying "I declar!" but corrected himself, and proceeded to ask divine protection for himself and family and the stranger within his gates, interpolating a few reflections upon his oldest son and heir's reprehensible act of sticking his fingers in the "meat gravy," and introducing in the invocation a promise to give the two youngest tow heads "a good larrupin' fur their obstreporosity of behaviour." Grace having been duly wound up by the head of the family smartly rapping the tow head nearest to him with his knuckles, for an infraction of proprieties, Ben was solicited not to stand on ceremony, but to "pitch in."
After supper a pipe and a chat by a log fire—more for light and cheerfulness than heat—followed. But our hero soon grew sleepy, tired out with the day's long walk, and retired to the cow shed determined to be up and away at early cock crow in the morning.
Sometime during the night he was partially awakened from his slumbers by voices on the kitchen porch. Half asleep and half awake he heard the following disjointed expressions:
"He's caught—Lickskillet jail—they're all a coming—'greed to it after meetin'—make an example of him—we'll show 'em—come on—be quick!" After which he was dimly conscious that some one entered the barn and saddled a horse. There was a clatter of hoofs out on the road, and then all was again quiet, and Ben slept peacefully.
It was the dark hour before dawn when the restless chanticleer from his perch in a neighboring apple tree called our hero up. He limbered himself with a good round of shakes and stamping life into his sleepy feet, started out in the dark for Lickskillet, five miles distant.