t you forget it." And the boy
pulled on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocery
man asked him if he wouldn't try a little new cider.

"Good heavens!" said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the
cider, and his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown
disappeared with the cider. "You have not stabbed your father, have you?
I have feared that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that
you would yet be hung."

"Naw, I haven't stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You
see, Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day
he bought a load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the
basement. I have not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn't do
it. When supper time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the
kindling wood, he had a hot box, and he told me if that wood was not in
when he came back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I
tried to hire some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come
in the morning and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was
going to buy the groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that
wouldn't help me out that night. I knew when Pa came home he would
search for me. So I slept in the back hall on a cot. But I didn't want
Pa to have all his trouble for nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat
that my chum's old maid aunt owns, and put the cat in my bed. I thought
if Pa came in my room after me, and found that by his unkindness I had
changed to a torn cat, he would be sorry. That is the biggest cat
you ever see, and the worst fighter in our ward. It isn't afraid of
anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog quicker than you could put
sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven o'clock I heard Pa tumble
over the kindling wood, and I knew by the remark he made, as the wood
slid around under him, that there was going to be a cat fight real
quick. He come up to Ma's room, and sounded Ma as to whether Hennery had
retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic when he tries
to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him say, as he
picked up a trunk strap, 'I guess I will go up to his room and watch the
smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him to
my aching bosom. I thought to myself, mebbe you won't yearn so much
directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I
looked around the corner and could see he just h