“Well, sirs, ez I stood there in the middle o’ the room thinkin’ what I’d do next an’ wonderin’ whether I hedn’t better jest slip back to bed, me eye ketched sight o’ an ole comf’table that filled a hole in the wall where the daubin’ hed fell out from atween the lawgs. That put me in mind o’ a scheme that I wasn’t long in kerryin’ out, fer the hole was pretty good sized an’ I’m a small man an’ wiry. In less’n no time the comf’table was outen that hole an’ I was in it. I stayed in it, too, fer jest ez me head an’ arms an’ shoulders got out o’ doors I felt a sharp prickin’ in me side. I pushed back an’ a great big splinter jagged me. I tried to go on for’a’d, an’ it jagged me agin so bad I ’most yelled. So I stayed right there--one-half outen the house an’ the other half een. Seemed like time begin to move awful slow then, an’ it ’peared a whole day ’fore the moon went from the top o’ the old lone pine tree into Grandaddy’s chestnut, which is jest twenty feet. Then me feet an’ legs was bakin’ over the stove, an’ the cold Apryl winds was a-whistlin’ down me neck. “I took to countin’ jest to pass time, an’ I ’low I must ’a’ counted fifteen million afore I heard footsteps up the road. A man come outen the woods an’ inter the moonlit clearin’, where I could see he was ole Hen Bingle. I whistled. He stopped an’ looked. I whistled agin an’ called soft like to him. He sneaked up to the gate an’ looked agin. “‘Hen, help,’ I whispers. “‘Who in the heck is you a-growin’ outen the side o’ that shanty?’ he calls, kind o’ hoarse an’ scared. With that he pints a musket at me wery threatenin’. “‘Hen Bingle!’ sais I. ‘Don’t you dast shoot. It’s me an’ I want you to pull me out. I’m goin’ to war.’ “Then it dawned on him what was up, an’ he come over an’ looks at me. I seen he hed on his blues, too, an’ I knowd ez he hed give his woman the sneak an’ was off to fight Spaynyards. He wanted to laugh, but I told him it were no time fer sech foolin’, but jest to break off that splinter an’ pull me loose. “Now, Hen’s an obligin’, patriotic kind o’ a feller, an’ tho’, ez he sayd, he hedn’t much time to waste, ez his woman was likely to wake up any minute an’ find him gone, he reached up an’ broke off the splinter. But I fit the hole so tight I couldn’t budge, an’ he sayd he’d pull me out. So he gits up on the wall o’ the well which was jest below me, an’ grabs me be both hands an’ drawed. I’d moved about an inch, ’hen he kicked out wild like an’ hung to me like a ton o’ hay, an’ gasped an’ groaned. I thought that yank hed disj’inted me all over, an’ yells, ‘Let go!’ “‘Don’t you dast let go!’ he sayd, lookin’ up at me kind o’ agonizin’. “Then I see that neither me nor Hen Bingle was ever goin’ to fight Spaynyards, fer he’d stepped off the wall an’ was hangin’ down inter the well.