'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked,
and you--" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned
her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and took a
walk.

Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that
room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little.
So I done it. But I dasn't go fur, or she'd 'a' sent for me. And when
it was late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and
told her the noise and shooting waked up me and "Sid," and the door
was locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the
lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never
want to try _that_ no more. And then I went on and told her all what I
told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe
it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of
boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could
see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she
better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she
had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done. So then
she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a
brown-study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says:

"Why, lawsamercy, it's most night, and Sid not come yet! What _has_
become of that boy?"

I see my chance; so I skips up and says:

"I'll run right up to town and get him," I says.

"No you won't," she says. "You'll stay right wher' you are; _one's_
enough to be lost at a time. If he ain't here to supper, your uncle
'll go."

Well, he warn't there to supper; so right after supper uncle went.

He come back about ten a little bit uneasy; hadn't run across Tom's
track. Aunt Sally was a good _deal_ uneasy; but Uncle Silas he said
there warn't no occasion to be--boys will be boys, he said, and you'll
see this one turn up in the morning all sound and right. So she had to
be satisfied. But she said she'd set up for him awhile anyway, and
keep a light burning so he could see it.

And then when I went up to bed she come up with me and fetched her
candle, and tucked me in, and mothered me so good I felt mean, and
like I couldn't look her in the face; and she set down on the bed and
talked with me a long time, and said what a splendid boy Sid was, and
didn't seem to want to ever stop talking about him; and kept asking me
every now and then if I reckone