o, as if he were
dumb, but now he lifted up his voice in a loud and poignant wail, and
after he was put to bed, he resurrected himself from among the
bedclothes, ever and anon, with a bitter, though infantile, jargon of
protest.

"I'm fairly afeard o' them bars," said Mrs. Grow, looking down upon the
prostrate timbers. "It's comical that they fell down that-a-way. I hopes
'tain't no sign o' bad luck. I wouldn't hev nothin' ter happen fur
nothin'. An' Benny war a-coughin' las' week."

She had not even the courage to put her fear into words. And she
tenderly admonished tow-headed Benny, who was once more getting out of
bed, to go to sleep and save his strength, and remember how he was
coughing last week.

"He hed a chicken-bone acrost his throat," said his father. "No wonder
he coughed."

Solomon rose and went out into the black night,--so black that he could
not distinguish the sky from the earth, or the unobstructed air from the
dense forest around.

He walked about blindly, dragging something heavily after him. The
weight of concealment it was. He knew something that nobody knew
besides.

At the critical moment of the altercation, he had stepped softly among
the shadows to the warping-bars,--a strong push had sent the great frame
crashing down. He was back in an instant among the others, and by reason
of the excitement his agency in the sensation was not detected.

Like his biblical namesake, Solomon was no fool. Had he been reared in a
cultivated community, with the advantages of education, he might have
been one of the bright young fellows who manage other young fellows, who
control debating societies, who are prominent in mysterious
associations, the secret of which is at once guarded and represented by
a Cerberus of three Greek letters.

But, wise as he was, Solomon was not a prophet. He had intended only to
effect a diversion, and stop the quarrel. He had had no prevision of the
panic of superstition that he had raised in the minds of these simple
people; for the ignorant mountaineer is a devout believer in signs and
warnings.

As Solomon wandered about outside, he heard his father stumbling from
the door of the house to the barn to see if aught of evil had come to
the cow or the horse. He knew how his grandmother's heart was wrung with
fear for her heifer, and he could hardly endure to think of his mother's
anxieties about Benny.

No prophetic eye was needed to foresee the terrors that would beset h