o the ladder,
and directly after the trap was closed again, and the bolt shot.

"Well, I never felt so much like fighting before--leastwise not since I
thrashed old Mike behind the barrel stack in the yard," said Jem,
resuming his coat, which he had thrown off.

"Did you fight Mike in the yard one day?" said Don wonderingly. "Why,
Jem, I remember; that's when you had such a dreadful black eye."

"That's right, my lad."

"And pretended you fell down the ladder out of floor number six."

"That's right again, Mas' Don," said Jem, grinning.

"Then that was a lie?"

"Well, I don't know 'bout it's being a lie, my lad. P'r'aps you might
call it a kind of a sort of a fib."

"Fib? It was an untruth."

"Well, but don't you see, it would have looked so bad to say, `I got
that eye a-fighting?' and it was only a little while 'fore I was
married. What would my Sally ha' said if she know'd I fought our Mike?"

"Why, of course; I remember now, Mike was ill in bed for a week at the
same time."

"That's so, Mas' Don," said Jem, chuckling; "and he was werry ill. You
see, he come to the yard to work, after you'd begged him on, and he was
drunk as a fiddler--not as ever I see a fiddler that way. And then,
i'stead o' doing his work, he was nasty, and began cussing. He cussed
everything, from the barrow and truck right up to your uncle, whose
money he took, and then he began cussing o' you, Mas' Don; and I told
him he ought to be ashamed of hisself for cussing the young gent as got
him work; and no sooner had I said that than I found myself sitting in a
puddle, with my nose bleeding."

"Well?" said Don, who was deeply interested.

"Well, Mas' Don, that's all."

"No, it isn't, Jem; you say you fought Mike."

"Well, I s'pose I did, Mas' Don."

"`Suppose you did'?"

"Yes; I only recklect feeling wild because my clean shirt and necktie
was all in a mess. I don't recklect any more--only washing my sore
knuckles at the pump, and holding a half hun'erd weight up again my
eye."

"But Mike stopped away from work for a week."

"Yes, Mas' Don. He got hisself a good deal hurt somehow."

"You mean you hurt him?"

"Dunno, Mas' Don. S'pose I did, but I don't 'member nothing about it.
And now look here, sir; seems to me that in half-hour's time it'll be
quite dark enough to start; and if I'd got five guineas, I'd give 'em
for five big screws, and the use of a gimlet and driver."

"What for?"

"To fasten down that ther