He took me by the collar and led me into the store-room. "Take off that coat!" he shouted, and as I was obeying him he said in a low and kindly tone. "Now you must yell as if I were cutting you in two," and with that he fell afoul of a sack of coffee and with the cow-hide laid the lash on furiously. I yelled at the top of my lusty voice, and during the intervals when my ears were not submerged by the torrent of my own outcry, I heard the revengeful step of Old Miss, up and down the passage-way. "Now go!" Old Master roared, "and the next time you hear it thunder, let tumblers alone." I came out buttoning up my jacket and Old Miss gave me a smile of welcome. But Bob and Miss May stood in the library door, crying; and to this day it is a dear memory that Miss May ran to the dining-room and brought me a sugared biscuit. Old Master and 'Squire Boyle strode out into the yard, and I saw Old Master lean upon the gate and laugh. During all that day I was the object of a pitying regard. "Po' little feller," was heard about the cabin door-ways and upon the sward, and there was many a sullen muttering and the shaking of nappy heads. Bob was furious, having come out of his tears into the territory of bold and resentful anger, and he blamed his mother with my unjust punishment, persisting until the old lady caught him ungently, slipped a soft shoe from her foot, and paddled him until the maudlin calves in a distant enclosure heeded his cries with bleatings of sympathy. And when he found himself free of his mother's avenging clutch, he ran to me and blubbering, said: "Come on, Dan. We'll go down to the creek and drown ourselves." This suggestion was in harmony with my sorrowful view, for now I felt worse than if Master had cut the blood out of me, and together we set out for the swimming-hole at the edge of the walnut grove. At times we halted to bid farewell to objects that were clear to us, the great oak from which the big gate swung, the smooth rock where we had so often sat at twilight. The horses nodded a farewell and the cows lowed at us. "It ain't our fault," said Bob, "and when they take us out of the creek dead, I want them to know it. But I don't think they'll cry very much. How can they, when they have tried to kill us?" "It won't make any difference to us whether they cry or not," I replied. "We won't know anything about it." We came to the swimming-hole and the water was blue and deep. Upon the grass under a tree we sat and gazed in silence into the pool. "We'll take off our clothes," said Bob, "and then when they find us they'll think that we were drowned accidentally and that will make 'em cry." The song of a plow-man came floating through the soft air; a blue-jay above us shrieked in a fit of merriment; a cat-bird laughed at us and we looked at each other. "Mars. Bob," said I, "he didn't hurt me much." "But I thought he was killing you by the way you hollered."