“The boys had told Phil to take the new road to Tadman’s Ferry, ’cause the hills were so steep on the old one, and the fellows were to go cross-lots and meet him on the other side, and then they were going to set the gun up as high as they could get it on Horncliffe. But Phil said he reckoned he knew what the horses could haul, and as soon as he was left to himself he struck off onto the old road. He was up high on the seat and I’d crawled in and was laying on the bottom, flatter than flat--froze on to the gun. We buzzed along lively at first. The down-hills were rather shaky work you guess, but the up-hills were worse, and they kept getting more so till we got to that awful steep pitch near the top of Smith’s hill. You know where that is?” “Oh, yes,” said Martin. “There is where you have to lean backward to keep from bumping your forehead when you go up. I suppose you rose to the occasion, Eph--it must have stood you and the gun right up on end.” “I got out,” Eph went on, “for the horses stood stockstill and couldn’t go an inch farther and then the wagon began to slip back, and Phil put stones back of the wheels. Then he went at his horses again, whipping and coaxing them. But it was no use. The road is slaty along there and the horses had no grip for their feet. He had to give it up at last and he left everything standing and went for the boys to get them to boost. As soon as I knew I was alone I hid the crowbars in a hollow tree, and I cut the traces and let the horses loose, and I took the linchpin out of one of the wheels--it wasn’t in very tight, and I took the ramrod of the gun, and I wrapped them traces around it and I dropped ’em into the brook at the foot of the hill. Then I put for home, and I waked up Ethan Allen and went to bed myself.” “I reckon you were in bed all the time, and saw all this with your eyes shut in the dark,” said a derisive voice. “Sure you didn’t dream it, Eph?” asked Seneca kindly. “It is a good yarn, anyway,” said Martin who had a taste for fancy sketches. “And it hangs together as well as most. I believe it is as true as any of us could make up unless we had facts or some little conveniences of that kind to go upon.” The little boy straightened up and leveled a look of indignant protest at the scoffers. Then, turning to Ethan Allen, he said, “You go on--you know about the rest of it.”