vain.

But Josiah Allen--oh, how that man loves me! He darted back, throwed a
paper at my feet, and hollered--

"That will explain, Samantha!" And then he wuz gone; I see 'em divide
into four parties, and go towards the woods, and towards the hills, and
towards the creek, and towards the beaver medder, each party havin' a
rope, and I sez solemn like, before I thought--

"May God have mercy on your poor soul!"

I spoze I meant the one they wuz after, and mebby I meant them that wuz
after him, I don't know; I wuz too inkoherent and wrought up to know
what I did mean.

But I know I sot down and read that paper as quick as I could find my
specks. And I well remember that after huntin' high and low for 'em and
all over the house with tremblin' knees and shaky hands cold as a
frog's, I found 'em on my own fore-top, and I sot right down in my
tracts and read.

Well, it wuz enough to melt the heart of a stun, a granit stun, and as I
sot there and read, the tears jest run down my face in a stream; why,
they fell so that they wet the front of my gingham dress wet as sop, and
ontirely onbeknown to me.

But I kep a-thinkin' to myself, "Oh, that poor little creeter! Oh, them
poor, poor creeters that loved her! Oh, that poor mother!" And then anon
I would say to myself, "Oh, what if it wuz my Tirzah Ann! What if it wuz
the Babe! Oh, that villian; may the Lord punish him!"

And that is jest the way I sot, and wept, and cried, and cried and wept.

You see, the way it wuz, there wuz a sweet little girl, only ten years
old, decoyed by a lyin' excuse from her warm, cosey home at midnight by
a villian, and took through the snowy, icy streets to her doom.

Her little cold body wuz found in an empty old barn, and her destroyer,
her murderer, had fled. But men wuz on his tracts, the hull country wuz
roused, and they wuz huntin' him down, as if he wuz a wild animal, as
indeed he wuz.

But anon, as I read the paper over again, I see these words--"The man
was intoxicated."

And then I begun to weep on the other end of my handkerchief (metafor).

And then, when other accounts come out, and the man wuz ketched, he
swore, and swore solemn, too, that he did not remember one single
solitary thing after he left that saloon where he got his drink till he
sobered up and found himself by the side of that little dead body.

And other witnesses swore that they see him drunk as a fool before he
sot out on his murderous and worse than murde