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king the trouble to go and look, insists upon it that was nothing but somebody's pet dog. She knows better. On this particular night, Keturah, in coming up from the garden to return to the house, had a dim impression that something crossed the walk in front of her and disappeared among the rustling trees. The impression was sufficiently strong to keep her sitting up for half an hour at her window, under the feeling that an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. She has indeed been asked why she did not reconnoitre the rustling trees upon the spot. She considers that would have been an exceedingly poor stroke of policy, and of an impolitic thing Keturah is not capable. She sees far and plans deep. Supposing she had gone and been shot through the head, where would have been the fun of her burglars? To yield a life-long aspiration at the very moment that it is within grasp, was too much to ask even of Keturah. Words cannot describe the sensations of the moment, when that half-hour was rewarded by the sight of two stealthy, cat-like figures, creeping out from among the trees. A tall man and a little man, and both with very unbanditti-like straw-hats on. Now, if Keturah has a horror in this world, it is that delicate play of the emotions commonly known as "woman's nonsense." And therefore did she sit still for three mortal minutes, with her burglars making tracks for the kitchen window under her very eyes, in order to prove to herself and an incredulous public, beyond all shadow of doubt or suspicion, that they were robbers and not dreams; actual flesh and blood, not nightmares; unmistakable hats and coats in a place where hats and coats ought not to be, not clothes-lines and pumps. She tried hard to make Amram and the Paterfamilias out of them. Who knew but they also, by some unheard-of revolution in all the laws of nature, were on an exploring expedition after truant sleep? She struggled manfully after the conviction that they were innocent and unimpeachable neighbors, cutting the short way home across the fields from some remarkably late prayer-meeting. She agonized after the belief that they were two of Patsy's sweethearts, come for the commendable purpose of serenading her. In fact they were almost in the house before this remarkable female was prepared to trust the evidence of her own senses. But when suspense gloomed into certainty, Keturah is happy to say that she was grandly equal to the occasion. S
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