“Wal, I reckon, boss,” said the narrator, as he took a fresh quid of tobacco, “I hain’t made no sech unreasonable assertion. I was sayin’ they hauled his neck back, and put his ears in place agin (or ruther one of ’em, for the butcher’s dog eat t’other one before the old sexton could git to it), so that he mout make somethin’ like a decent appearance in the coffin. “Soon as Spence went over the eave I lost sight of him, for I was drivin’ pooty briskly over Kent’s corn patch, and as I came sweepin’ down by the widder O’Donnell’s she was in the yard gittin’ an apron full of chips. I reckon she heer’d a burrin’ sound overhead, ’cause she looked up, and when she seed the balloon she gin a squall and cried out somethin’ about protection. I reckoned she was callin’ on the saints, but had no time just then to listen. Before she had gone many steps she dropped, and I allowed she had gone down in a faintin’ fit. “I was a drivin’ and a driftin’ over the village like a thistle-down, for more than two hours, and the dogs war a barkin’ and the men and wimmin a hollerin’ and a runnin’ arter it wherever it drifted. The barn-yard fowls war a cacklin’ and a screamin’. Jewillikens! didn’t I make a rumption among them though! You’d think thar war forty thousand hawks and turkey-buzzards a hoverin’ over the village, by the way they scattered, aginst the winders, ahind stun walls, into the wells, under lumber piles and currint bushes; such a scrougin’ and squattin’ and scootin’ I never did see. Parson Jones had thirteen lights of glass smashed by fowls batterin’ aginst the winders tryin’ to git in, and Dud Davis, the blacksmith, fished seven dead hens, two turkeys, a guinea fowl, and two small pigs out of his well next day, whar they sought refuge and war drown’d. Dad Kent gin me six traces of good seed corn next fall. He said barrin’ the killin’ of Priest McGillop, it was the best thing that ever happened in Tuckersville. He said I did more for his crop than if he had a scarecrow standin’ astride every hill. Thar wasn’t a crow flew within two miles of the village for mor’n a fortnight, and by that time the corn was grown so they couldn’t pull it up. “Pooty soon the balloon come down about house high and druv over toward the dee-pot. I was a hopin’ she’d catch on the telegraph wire, but she skimm’d over, like a swallow over a fence, and immediately riz up tree high agin, where scrape, slap, slash, she went into an ole pine that stood out alone in the field. I was scratched pooty bad, but hung on to the limbs, and arter a while slid down the tree leavin’ the balloon hangin’ in the tree-top. Great turnips! if all Tuckersville wasn’t down thar in five minutes. Thar war young ‘uns runnin’ around half-dressed, with corn-dodgers in their hands, and wimmin with babies in their arms. It was like a dog fight, only, as the feller said when describin’ the nigger by the mulatter, it was more so. [Illustration: “GO IN, CRIPPLE.”]