abin window; and sometimes on
the water you could see a spark or two--on a raft or a scow, you know;
and maybe you could hear a fiddle or a song coming over from one of
them crafts. It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there,
all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up
at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just
happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I
judged it would have took too long to _make_ so many. Jim said the
moon could 'a' _laid_ them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I
didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as
many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that
fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled
and was hove out of the nest.

Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in
the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up
out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look
awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink
out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by
and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and
joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for
you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.

After midnight the people on shore went to bed, and then for two or
three hours the shores was black--no more sparks in the cabin windows.
These sparks was our clock--the first one that showed again meant
morning was coming, so we hunted a place to hide and tie up right
away.

One morning about daybreak I found a canoe and crossed over a chute to
the main shore--it was only two hundred yards--and paddled about a
mile up a crick amongst the cypress woods, to see if I couldn't get
some berries. Just as I was passing a place where a kind of a cowpath
crossed the crick, here comes a couple of men tearing up the path as
tight as they could foot it. I thought I was a goner, for whenever
anybody was after anybody I judged it was _me_--or maybe Jim. I was
about to dig out from there in a hurry, but they was pretty close to
me then, and sung out and begged me to save their lives--said they
hadn't been doing nothing, and was being chased for it--said there was
men and dogs a-coming. They wanted to jump right in, but I says:

"Don't you do it. I don't hear the dogs and horses yet; you've got
ti