re to creep
out, when the folks were gone to bed, and go to work. And it happened to
be work that time, you'd better believe!

We were all sitting around the table when the clock struck nine. Pop had
his spectacles on, and was reading an editorial to ma, the girls were
busy with their lessons, and I had finished my last example, when all at
once we heard a terrible coughing and sneezing out in the street. That
was the worst of Tom Jones--he always overdid his part. If he'd had
pneumonia, whooping-cough, asthma, and bronchitis, and been hired to go
round with a cough medicine to cure 'em, he couldn't have turned himself
further inside out. Of course Pop began to notice it, and ma looked up
in alarm. "Why," said ma, "that boy's got a terrible cold!"

"Fearful!" said Pop, with a queer twist of his under lip; and when Tom
Jones, like a big donkey, went across the street to Jim Clancy's house,
and began the whole thing over again, Pop wanted to know why that boy's
cold was like the paper he held in his hand. We all gave it up, and Pop
said because it was _periodical_. Ma and the girls looked mystified, but
I was afraid then he'd tumbled to something, and couldn't help getting
red, to save my life. That's the worst of my plagued skin--it's so thin
the blood shows right through it.

There were no more of the boys' houses in our avenue, and pretty soon we
all went to bed. I slept in the little room on the second floor off the
hall; it was an easy thing to climb out the window, and down by the
Virginia creeper to the front garden. I went around to our place of
meeting, and there they all were. The wind had sprung up pretty brisk,
and there was a thin coating of ice over the mud; but that was all the
better for the gates we wanted to bury. We owed a grudge to old Jake Van
Couter, and we made up our minds he'd have a nice time getting his gate
back. The miserable old caboodle was rusty, and nearly tore our nails
off, but we got it loose at last, and hauled it off to a marshy lot,
where we sunk it in the mud. Then we changed the doctor's gate to the
judge's, and to avert suspicion we took our own gates off with the rest.
We were getting pretty well tired out and ready for home, and had laid
my gate up against a neighboring fence, when who should be standing
right there in the shadow of the wall but Pop! We were all so
thunder-struck that we didn't move, and to my surprise Pop began to
laugh and beckon to the boys to come closer.