"Wall, he wouldn't have been dead if he had had any care took of him," he yelled out. "Why," sez I, "he wuz killed by lightnin'; struck down entirely onexpected five years ago last summer." "Oh, argue and dispute with a dying man. Gracious Peter! what will become of me!" he groaned out, a-holdin' his foot in his hand. Sez I, "Let me put some Pond's Extract on it, Josiah." "Pond's Extract!" he yelled, and then he called that good remedy words I wuz ashamed to hear him utter. And he jumped round and pranced and kicked just as it is the nater of man to act under bodily injury of that sort. And then he ordered me to take a pin and get the thorn out, and then acted mad as a hen at me all the time I wuz a-doin' it; acted jest as if I wuz a-prickin' him a-purpose. He talked voyalent and mad. I tried to hush him down; I told him the author of "Wedlock's Peaceful Repose" would hear him, and he hollered back "he didn't care a cent who heard him. He wuz killed, and he shouldn't live to trouble anybody long if that pain kept up." His acts and words wuz exceedingly skairful to anybody who didn't understand the nater of a man. But I wuzn't moved by 'em so much as the width of a horse hair. Good land! I knew that jest as soon as the pain subsided he would be good as gold, so I kep' on, cool and collected, and got the thorn out, and did up the suffering toe in Pond's Extract, and I hadn't only jest got it done, when, for all the world! if I didn't see a double team stop in front of the house, and I peeked through the winder and see as it wuz the livery stable man from Jonesville, and he had brung down the last straws to be lifted onto the camel's back--a hull lot of onexpected company. A hull load of 'em. There wuz the Baptist minister and his wife and their three children, and the minister's wife's sister-in-law from the West, who wuz there a-visitin', and the editor of the _Augur'ses_ wife (she wuz related to the visitor from the West by marriage) and three of the twins. And old Miss Minkley, she wuz acquainted with the visitor's mother, used to go to school with her. And Drusilly Sypher, she wuz the visitor from the West's bosom friend, or used to be. Wall, they had all come down to spend the afternoon and visit with each other, and with me and Josiah, and stay to supper. CHAPTER VI.