"Waal," put in Rufe, hastening to explain this discrepancy in the spectre, "I hearn you-uns a-sayin' that mornin', fore ye set out from the tanyard, ez she war mighty nigh dead an' would be gone 'fore night. An' ez he hed tole me he'd skeer the wits out'n me, I 'lowed ez I could show him ez his wits warn't ez tough ez mine. Though," added the roguish Rufe, with a grin of enjoyment, "arter I hed dressed up the blackberry bush in mam's apron an' shawl, an' sot her bonnet a-top, it tuk ter noddin' and bowin' with the wind, an' looked so like folks, ez it gin ME a skeer, an' I jes' run home ez hard ez I could travel. An Towse, he barked at it!" Andy Byers spoke suddenly. "Waal, Birt holped ye, then." "He never!" cried Rufe, emphatically, unwilling to share the credit, or perhaps discredit, of the enterprise. "Birt dunno nuthin' 'bout it ter this good day." Rufe winked slyly. "Birt would tell mam ez I hed been a-foolin' with her shawl an' bonnet." Andy Byers still maintained a most incongruous gravity. "It warn't Birt's doin', at all?" he said interrogatively, and with a pondering aspect. Jubal Perkins broke into a derisive guffaw. "What ails ye, Andy?" he cried. "Though ye never seen no harnt, ye 'pear ter be fairly witched by that thar tricked-out blackberry bush." Rufe shrugged up his shoulders, and began to shiver in imaginary terror over a fancied fire. "Old--Mis'--Price's--harnt!" he wheezed. The point of view makes an essential difference. Jube Perkins thought Rufe's comicality most praiseworthy--his pipe went out while he laughed. Byers flushed indignantly. "Ye aggervatin' leetle varmint!" he cried suddenly, his patience giving way. He seized the crouching mimic by the collar, and although he did not literally knock him off the wood-pile, as Rufe afterward declared, he assisted the small boy through the air with a celerity that caused Rufe to wink very fast and catch his breath, when he was deposited, with a shake, on the soft pile of ground bark some yards away. Rufe was altogether unhurt, but a trifle subdued by this sudden aerial excursion. The fun was over for the present. He gathered himself together, and went demurely and sat down on the lowest log of the wood-pile. After a little he produced a papaw from his pocket, and by the manner in which they went to work upon it, his jagged squirrel teeth showed that they were better than they looked. Towse had followed his master to the tanyard, and was lying asleep beside the woodpile, with his muzzle on his forepaws. He roused himself suddenly at the sound of munching, and came and sat upright, facing Rufe, and eyeing the papaw gloatingly. He wagged his tail in a beguiling fashion, and now and then turned his head blandishingly askew.