“Yes, you did. And you need not stretch out great big eyes at me, as if it wasn’t true, neither, for you did. You did kill me stone dead, all in a minute, before I could holler. I did hear Ducky Darling holler, and then I went stone dead, and so near heaven that I did hear the angels playing on cymbals through my whole head. And then I knowed nothing till I come to life this minute, right here,” Owlet said, quite simply. “Now, don’t you know that you are talking the beastliest nonsense that ever was heard? If anybody had killed you stone dead how could you come to life again? Tell me that,” Hanson said. “I know it sounds like nonsense,” Owlet frankly admitted, “and if anybody had told me such a strange thing, and wanted me to believe it, why, you know, I should have told them they were not possessed of common sense. But for all that, I know it is the truth. And if anybody but you had called it nonsense I should not have blamed them; but you know it is the truth. You did kill me stone dead—dead! dead! dead!—dead as a doornail!” “Well, then, how the devil did you contrive to come to life again?” laughed Hanson. “It wasn’t the devil, and I didn’t contrive nothing; and I don’t know, unless maybe I didn’t get quite loose out of my body, for you know I only heard the angels playing on the cymbals. I did not go among them; and maybe the shaking of the train shook me down again into my body, and so I come to life. But I don’t know. It makes my head ache to think,” said the child, putting both hands up to her forehead. “Then don’t think. It won’t pay,” Hanson advised. “I must,” said Owlet. “There ain’t nobody else here to think for me. And now, then,” she exclaimed, with sudden energy, dropping her hands and fixing him with her eyes, “what do you mean by it?” “Mean by what, monkey?” “By killing me and carrying me off?” “I never hurt a hair of your head.” “I know you didn’t hurt me, but you killed me as dead as Jubious Cedar.” “I didn’t kill you.” “Well, never mind, I come to life again, anyhow. But what did you bring me here for?” “I told you before. I am your legal guardian, and I have to take care of you,” said Hanson, smiling on the child. “Now you are going it! Ain’t you afraid of the dark world?” “Pooh! pooh!” “You are not my guardian! Lady is my guardian, and you shall not take care of me; and the next place the cars stop at I mean to get out and go home to Lady. I know she is fretting after me now, and Ducky Darling is crying her eyes out, too. Oh, yes, I must get out at the very next place and go home.” “But suppose I cannot let you go?” inquired Hanson, partly amused and partly annoyed by the child’s persistence. “I’d just like to see you try to stop me,” said Owlet, turning her head on one side and looking at him out of the corner of her eye in the most mocking manner. “Why, what would you do?”