"You put me in mind, honey, of the lady in the book that leaned ag'in the old ellum tree and shuck wi' sobs, ever' one on 'em more'n a foot an' a half long, wi' stickers on 'em like a wild briar. It's a sad thing for to say, but I'm oblidze to say it. The time has come when we've got to part. Ef we go on this way, the Boogerman will come along an' put us both in his wallet, an' then what'll we do? Things can't go on this a-way. It may be for years an' it may be forever, as Miss Ann Tatum says when she begins for to squall at her peanner, but the time to part has come. You creep up yander by the fence, so you can see the Boogerman ef he tries for to git away, an' I'll roost aroun' in the bushes. Ef I jump him I'll holla, an' ef he come your way, jest shet your eyes an' give him both barrels in the neighbourhood of eyeballs an' appetite. You can't kill the Boogerman unless you hit him in his green eye--the other is a dark mud colour." Well, they separated, the Bishop beating in the bushes and underbrush, as he called the crab-grass and weeds that had begun to make their appearance in the corn-patch, and Adelaide creeping to her post of observation as though she were stalking some wild and wary animal. She could hear the Bishop rustling about in the thick corn, but couldn't catch a glimpse of him. Once she heard him sneeze as only a middle-aged man can sneeze, and she frowned as a general frowns when his orders have been disobeyed. Presently she heard some one coming along the side street, which, being away from the main thoroughfares, was little frequented. Occasionally a pedestrian, or a farmer going home, or house servants, who lived near-by, passed along its narrow length. The moment she heard footsteps, Adelaide shrank back in the thick corn, and held her cornstalk gun in readiness. Her hair might have been mistaken for a tangle of corn-silks newly sunburned as it fell over her face. The steps drew nearer, and, in a moment, a negro came into view. He was a stranger to Adelaide, and that fact only made it more certain that he was the Boogerman himself, who had jumped the garden fence in order to elude Mr. Sanders, and was now sauntering along appearing as innocent as innocence itself. When the Boogerman came opposite Adelaide's hiding-place, she jumped up suddenly, aimed her gun and cried _Bang!_ in a loud voice. Now, as it happened, the passing negro was one who could meet and beat Adelaide on her own ground. The cornstalk gun, with its imperative _Bang!_ carried him back to old times, though he was not old--back to the times when he played make-believe with his young mistress and the rest of the children. Therefore, simultaneously with Adelaide's _Bang!_ he stopped in his tracks, his face working convulsively, his arms flying wildly about, and his legs giving way under him. He sank slowly to the ground, and then began to flop about just as a chicken does when its head is wrung off.