"I--suppose--so. Is it you, Jack?" "Yes. Are you dead?" "I don't know. Are you?" "I guess I must be if you are. How awfully dark it is." "Awfully dark! It must have been the comet." "Yes; did you get much hurt?" "Not much--I say, Jack?" "What?" "It is the judgment day." Jill broke up, so did I; we lay as still as we could. If it were the judgment day--"Jill!" said I. "Oh, dear me!" sobbed Jill. We were both crying by that time, and I don't feel ashamed to own up, either. "If I'd known," said I, "that the day of judgment was coming on the twelfth of August, I wouldn't have been so mean about that jack-knife of yours with the notch in it." "And I wouldn't have eaten your luncheon that day last winter when I got mad at you," said Jill. "Nor we wouldn't have cheated mother about smoking, vacations," said I. "I'd never have played with the Bailey boys out behind the barn," said Jill. "I wonder where the comet went to?" said I. "'Whether we shall be plunged into,'" quoted Jill, in a horrible whisper, from that dreadful newspaper, "'shall be plunged into a wild vortex of angry space--or suffocated with noxious gases--or scorched to a helpless crisp--or blasted--'" "When do you think they will come after us?" I interrupted Jill. That very minute somebody came. We heard a step and then another, then a heavy bang. Jill howled out a little. I didn't, for I was thinking how the cellar door banged like that. Then came a voice, an awful hoarse and trembling voice as ever you heard. "George Zacharias!" Then I knew it must be the judgment day and that the angel had me in court to answer him, for you couldn't expect an angel to call you Jack after you was dead. "George Zacharias!" said the awful voice again. I didn't know what else to do, I was so frightened, so I just hollered out "Here!" as I do at school. "Timothy!" came the voice once more. Now Jill had a bright idea. Up he shouted, "Absent!" at the top of his lungs. "George! Jack! Jill! where are you? Are you killed? Oh, wait a minute and I'll bring a light." This did not sound so much like judgment day as it did like Aunt John. I began to feel better. So did Jill. I sat up. So did he. It wasn't a minute till the light came into sight, and something that looked like a cellar door, the cellar steps, and Aunt John's spotted wrapper, and Miss Togy in a night-gown, away behind as white as a ghost. Aunt John held the light above her head and looked down. I don't believe I shall ever see an angel that will make me feel any better to look at than Aunt John did that night. "O you blessed boys!" said Aunt John--she was laughing and crying together. "To think that you should have fallen through the old chimney to the cellar floor and be sitting there alive in such a funny heap as that!"