The Bishop heard a wild, exultant shout from Adelaide: "Run, Bishop, run! I've got him! I've killed the Boogerman! Run, Bishop, run!" Mr. Sanders ran as fast as he could; and when he saw the negro lying on the ground, with no movement save an occasional quiver of the limbs and a sympathetic twitching of the fingers, his amazement knew no bounds. "Why, honey!" he cried, "what in the world have you done to him?" "I didn't do a thing, Bishop, but shoot him with my cornstalk gun; I didn't know it had such a heavy load in it. Anyhow, he had no business to be the Boogerman. Do you think he's truly--ann--dead, Bishop?" "As dead," Mr. Sanders declared solemnly, "as Hector. I dunno how dead Hector was, but this feller is jest as dead as him--that is ef he ain't got a conniption fit; I've heern tell of sech things." They climbed the garden fence, and went to where the Boogerman was lying stretched out. "When a man's dead," said Mr. Sanders, "he'll always tell you so ef you ax him." "Boogerman! oh, Boogerman!" cried Adelaide, going a little closer. "Ma'am!" replied the dead one feebly. "When the Boogerman is dead," said Adelaide, "and anybody asks him if it is so, he lifts his left foot and rolls his eyeballs. Are you dead?" In confirmation of that fact, the foot was lifted, and the eyeballs began to roll. Adelaide was almost beside herself with delight. Never had she hoped to have such an experience as this. "Where shall he be buried, Bishop?" "Close to the ash-hopper, right behind the kitchen," promptly responded Mr. Sanders. "Get up, Boogerman!" commanded Adelaide. "You have to go to your own fumerl, you know, and you might as well go respectably." Adelaide always uttered a deliciously musical gurgle when she used a big word. "Yes," said Mr. Sanders; "as fur as my readin' goes, thar ain't nothin' in the fourteenth an' fifteenth amendments ag'in it." Now, old Jonas's side-gate opened on this street, and on this gate Lucindy chanced to be leaning, when the Boogerman, fatally wounded by Adelaide's cornstalk gun, sank upon the ground and began to jump around like a chicken with its head off. She was tremendously frightened at first; in fact she was almost paralysed. So she stayed where she was, explaining afterward that she didn't want to be mixed up "wid any er deze quare doin's what done got so common sence de big rucus." Then she saw Adelaide and Mr. Sanders climb the garden fence and stand over the fallen negro, and curiosity overcame her fright. By the time the negro was on his feet, Lucindy had arrived. She looked at him hard, jumped at him, threw her arms around his neck, and squeezed him so tight that the two of them kept turning around as if they were trying to keep time to a smothered waltz; and all the while Lucindy was moaning and groaning and thanking the Lord that her son whom she had not seen in four long years, had come, as it were, right straight to her bosom.