ays she. 'Wal, now,' says she, 'I like
to see a parson with his silk stockin's and great gold-headed cane, a
lollopin' on his carriage behind his fat, prancin' hosses, comin' to
meetin' to preach to us poor folks not to want to be rich! How'd he like
it to have forty-'leven children, and nothin' to put onto 'em or into
'em, I wonder? Guess if Lady Lothrop had to rub and scrub, and wear
her fingers to the bone as I do, she'd want to be rich; and I guess the
parson, if he couldn't get a bellyful for a week, would be for diggin'
up Kidd's money, or doing 'most any thing else to make the pot bile.'

"'Wal,' says I, 'I'll kind o' go with ye, boys, and sort o' see how
things turn out; but I guess I won't take no shere in't,' says I.

"Wal, they got it all planned out. They was to wait till the full moon,
and then they was to get Primus King to go with 'em and help do the
diggin'. Ye see, Hokum and Toddy Whitney and Wiggin are all putty softly
fellers, and hate dreffully to work; and I tell you the Kidd money ain't
to be got without a pretty tough piece o' diggin. Why, it's jest like
diggin' a well to get at it. Now, Primus King was the master hand for
diggin' wells, and so they said they'd get him by givin' on him a shere.

"Harry Wiggin he didn't want no nigger a sherin' in it, he said; but
Toddy and Hokum they said that when there was such stiff diggin' to be
done, they didn't care if they did go in with a nigger.

"Wal, Wiggin he said he hadn't no objection to havin' the nigger do the
diggin,' it was _sherin' the profits_ he objected to.

"'Wal,' says Hokum, 'you can't get him without,' says he. 'Primus knows
too much,' says he: 'you can't fool him.' Finally they 'greed that
they was to give Primus twenty dollars, and shere the treasure 'mong
themselves.

"Come to talk with Primus, he wouldn't stick in a spade, unless they'd
pay him aforehand. Ye see, Primus was up to 'em; he knowed about Gidger,
and there wa'n't none on 'em that was particular good pay; and so they
all jest hed to rake and scrape, and pay him down the twenty dollars
among 'em; and they 'greed for the fust full moon, at twelve' o'clock at
night, the 9th of October.

"Wal, ye see I had to tell Hepsy I was goin' out to watch. Wal, so I
was; but not jest in the way she took it: but, Lordy massy! a feller has
to tell his wife suthin' to keep her quiet, ye know, 'specially Hepsy.

"Wal, wal, of all the moonlight nights that ever I did see, I never did
s