me to frighten you so, you great onmannerly, onmarciful,
coward, you. Come, scratch up, this minute.'

"Well, the more she talked, the more he groaned; but the devil a word,
good or bad, could she get out of him at all. With that, she stoops
down, and catches up his staff, and says she, 'I have as great a mind to
give you a jab with this here toothpick, where your mother used to spank
you, as ever I had in all my life. But if you want it, my old 'coon, you
must come and get it; for if you won't help me, I shall help myself.'

"Jist at that moment, her eyes being better accustomed to the dim light
of the place, she see'd a man, a sittin' at the fur eend of the room,
with his back to the wall, larfin' ready to kill himself. He grinned
so, he showed his corn-crackers from ear to ear. She said, he stript his
teeth like a catamount, he look'd so all mouth.

"Well, that encouraged her, for there ain't much harm in a larfin' man;
it's only them that never larf that's fearfulsome. So sais she 'My good
man, will you he so kind as to lend me your arm down this awful peak,
and I will reward you handsomely, you may depend.'

"Well, he made no answer, nother; and thinkin' he didn't onderstand
English, she tried him in Italian, and then in broken French, and then
bungled out a little German; but no, still no answer. He took no more
notice of her and her mister, and senior, and mountsheer, and mynheer,
than if he never heerd them titles, but jist larfed on.

"She stopped a minit, and looked at him full in the face, to see what he
meant by all this ongenteel behaviour, when all of a sudden, jist as she
moved one step nearer to him, she saw he was a dead man, and had been so
long there, part of the flesh had dropt off or dried off his face; and
it was that that made him grin that way, like a fox-trap. It was the
bone-house they was in. The place where poor, benighted, snow-squalled
stragglers, that perish on the mountains, are located, for their friends
to come and get them, if they want 'em; and if there ain't any body that
knows 'em or cares for 'em, why they are left there for ever, to dry
into nothin' but parchment and atomy, as it's no joke diggin' a grave in
that frozen region.

"As soon as she see'd this, she never said another blessed word, but
jist walked off with the livin' man's pike, and began to poke her way
down the mountain as careful as she cleverly could, dreadful tired, and
awful frighted.

"Well, she hadn't go