let him fall asleep for fear he wouldn't wake up no more.
They had give him ether or somethin' and so he kept gettin' drowsier and
drowsier, and finally died in his sleep.

So my pa and grandpa talked till noon--most wonderful talk; and then we
had dinner and grandma told more funny stories than you ever heard, and
had the best time in the world. And after dinner, grandpa hitched up the
horses and drove pa to Atterberry to catch the train for Havaner. But pa
wouldn't take me. He says, "No, sir, you stay here and get well, and
mind your grandma and help her. If you don't, I'll whale you. And I'll
come for you a week from Saturday, maybe."

That settled that, I was afraid. "Well, then," I said, "will you tell
Mitch that I'll be back a week from Saturday?" He said he would, and I
made up my mind to it.

What do you suppose, when we got to Atterberry, there was Willie Wallace
in charge of a freight train which had side-tracked for the passenger
goin' to Havaner. You can't imagine how funny it seemed to see him
talkin' to the conductor and everything; and how funny it seemed that I
knowed him so well, since I had seen him plow and drive a team and all
that on the farm.

"How do you like it?" says I to Willie.

"No more farm for me," says Willie.

"Ain't you afeard? Ain't it dangerous?"

"Yes, it's dangerous," says he. "But look at the pay. And then look at
the fun. One night it's Springfield, the next night Peoria--always
somethin' new."

Just then the passenger train whistled, and Willie got up and began to
motion to the engineer on his train. I went back to the platform and
said good-by to pa. And then we drove back to the farm.

CHAPTER XVI

When we got back to the farm, who do you suppose was there? My ma and
Myrtle. She said she was just tired stayin' alone all the time--that pa
was always away; and now that Little Billie was dead, she couldn't stand
it. She said she never seed such a town as Petersburg was, that she had
half a mind to go back to Boston where she was born and raised. That she
didn't believe there was such characters in the whole world as Doc Lyon
and dozens of others in Petersburg, Joe Pink, and the hoodlums and
roughs, and she was afeard all the time some of 'em would kill pa for
bein' States Attorney. That it was just one murder after another, that
even she'd lost confidence in Mrs. Rainey, who had been her friend, and
couldn't understand the talk about Joe Rainey having a pistol