some
ice and put on my stomach, and all the way down, for I am burning up.'
I went to the-water pitcher and got a chunk of ice and put inside Pa's
shirt, and while Ma was tearing up an old skirt to stop the flow of
blood, I asked Pa if he felt better, and if he could describe the
villains who had murdered him. Pa gasped and moved his legs to get them
cool from the clotted blood, he said, and he went on, 'One of them was
about six foot high, and had a sandy mustache. I got him down and hit
him on the nose, and if the police find him, his nose will be broke. The
second one was thick set, and weighed about two hundred. I had him down,
and my boot was on his neck, and I was knocking two more down when I was
hit. The thick set one will have the mark of boot heels on his throat.
Tell the police when I'm gone, about the boot heel marks.'

"By this time Ma had got the skirt tore up, and she stuffed it under
Pa's shirt, right where he said he was hit, and Pa was telling us what
to do to settle his estate, when Ma began to smell the liniment, and
she found the broken bottle in his pocket, and searched Pa for the place
where he was stabbed, and then she began to laugh, and Pa got mad and
said he didn't see as a death-bed scene was such an almighty funny
affair; and then she told him he was not hurt, but that he had fallen on
the stairs and broke his bottle, and that there was no blood on him,
and he said, 'do you mean to tell me my body and legs are not bathed in
human gore?' and then Pa got up and found it was only the liniment. He
got mad and asked Ma why she didn't fly around and get something to take
that liniment off his legs, as it was eating them right through to the
bone; and then he saw my chum put his head in the door, with one gallus
hanging down, and Pa looked at me, and then he said, 'Lookahere, if I
find out it was you boys that put up this job on me, I'll make it so hot
for you that you will think liniment is ice cream in comparison.' I told
Pa it didn't look reasonable that me and my chum could be six burglars,
six feet high, with our noses broke, and boot-heel marks on our neck,
and Pa, he said for us to go to bed alfired quick, and give him a chance
to rinse of that liniment, and we retired. Say, how does my Pa strike
you as a good, single-handed liar?" and the boy went up to the counter,
while the grocery man went after a scuttle of coal.

In the meantime, one of the grocery man's best customers--a deacon in
t