“Well, I got the horse all harnessed and the bits in his mouth, and ever’thing ready to hitch up, and then went back in the house. I’d been thinkin’ that I’d better take one more look, not that ‘twould do any good but just because it might. You know when you’ve lost a knife, or a quarter, or anything, and you look through all your pockets and find it ‘tain’t there, and then go back and look through all of ‘em again and don’t find it; then you ain’t satisfied with that and mebbe you keep a lookin’ through ‘em all day, even when you know ‘tain’t there. Well, that’s the way I felt about her, only I s’pose a good deal worse, so when I got in I looked her over again just the same way’s I had before. I felt for her pulse and her heart but ‘twa’n’t no use. Then I got my old overcoat and my hat and got ready to start, but before I left I thought I’d just look out once to see if the folks in the next house was abed, and I found they wa’n’t, for there was a light in the kitchen right next to mine, and I knew ‘twould never do to carry that kind of a bundle out the back door while they was up. So I waited a little while until the light went out and ever’thing was still, and then put on my coat and hat and picked her up in my arms. It was an awful hard thing to do, but there wa’n’t nothin’ else for it, so I just kind of took my mind off’n it and picked her up. When I got her kind of in my arms one of her arms sort of fell over, and her legs kind of hung down like they was wood, and then I see I had to fasten ‘em some way or I couldn’t never carry her. It wa’n’t like a live person that can stay right where they want to; it was more like carryin’ an arm full of wood that would scatter all around unless you get it held tight. “Then I laid her down and found some string and tied her arms tight around her body, and then fastened her ankles together. Then I went into the bedroom and got a quilt off’n our bed and rolled her up in that. You know at my trial they made out that ‘twas bad for me to tie her that way, and if I hadn’t been awful wicked I wouldn’t have done it. But I can’t see anything in that; there wa’n’t no other way to do it. Then they said it was awful bad the way I took her off and the place I dumped her, and the newspapers made that out one of the worst things about it all; but I tried to think up something else to do and I couldn’t, and there she was dead, and I had to do the best I could. I washed her and fixed her all up before I went away, and if there’d been anything else I could have done I know I would.