now."

"I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end. I _never_ see the beat of
it in all my born days. A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six
can--"

"Missus," comes a young yaller wench, "dey's a brass cannelstick
miss'n."

"Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!"

Well, she was just a-biling. I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I
would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated. She
kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself,
and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas,
looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket. She
stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished
I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says:

"It's _just_ as I expected. So you had it in your pocket all the time;
and like as not you've got the other things there, too. How'd it get
there?"

"I reely don't know, Sally," he says, kind of apologizing, "or you
know I would tell. I was a-studying over my text in Acts Seventeen
before breakfast, and I reckon I put it in there, not noticing,
meaning to put my Testament in, and it must be so, because my
Testament ain't in; but I'll go and see; and if the Testament is where
I had it, I'll know I didn't put it in, and that will show that I laid
the Testament down and took up the spoon, and--"

"Oh, for the land's sake! Give a body a rest! Go 'long now, the whole
kit and biling of ye; and don't come nigh me again till I've got back
my peace of mind."

I'd 'a' heard her if she'd 'a' said it to herself, let alone speaking
it out; and I'd 'a' got up and obeyed her if I'd 'a' been dead. As we
was passing through the setting-room the old man he took up his hat,
and the shingle-nail fell out on the floor, and he just merely picked
it up and laid it on the mantel-shelf, and never said nothing, and
went out. Tom see him do it, and remembered about the spoon, and says:

"Well, it ain't no use to send things by _him_ no more, he ain't
reliable." Then he says: "But he done us a good turn with the spoon,
anyway, without knowing it, and so we'll go and do him one without
_him_ knowing it--stop up his rat-holes."

There was a noble good lot of them down cellar, and it took us a whole
hour, but we done the job tight and good and shipshape. Then we heard
steps on the stairs, and blowed out our light and hid; and here comes
the old man, with a candle in one hand and a