“Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Saturday night, about ten o'clock we heard somebody in the back yard, around the kitchen door, just as we were going to bed, and Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the church money he had collected last Sunday. He had got to turn it over the next day, to pay the minister's expenses on his vacation, and it made him nervous to have it around. I peeked out of the window and saw the man, and I told Pa, and Pa got a revolver and began shooting through the wire screen to the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket and begin to climb over the fence real sudden, and I went out and began to groan, as though somebody was dying in the alley, and I brought in the basket with the mackerel and green corn, and told Pa that from the groaning out there I guess he had killed the grocery delivery man, and I wanted Pa to go out and help me hunt for the body, but he said he was going to take the midnight train to go out west on some business, and Pa lit out. I guess your man was scared and went one way and Pa was scared and went the other. Won't they be astonished when they meet each other on the other side of the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet, if he gives Pa any sass. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as soon eat as to kill a man.” “Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic or something, and will come back when he gets sober, but how are your theatricals getting along?” asked the grocery man. “O, that scheme is all busted,” said the boy. “At least until the minister gets back from his vacation. The congregation has noticed a red spot on his hand for some time, and the ladies said what he needed was rest. They said if that spot was allowed to go on it might develope into a pimple, and the minister might die of blood poison, superinduced by overwork, and they took up a collection, and he has gone. The night they bid him good bye, the spot on his hand was the subject of much comment. The wimmen sighed, and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on his hand before it had sapped his young life away. Pa said Job had more than four hundred boils worse than that, and he never took a vacation, and then Ma dried Pa up. She told Pa he had never suffered from blood poison, and Pa said he could raise cat boils for the market, and never squeal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let him go home with the choir singer. So she bounced him off with her, and he didn't get home till most 'leven o'clock, but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what she said to Pa made him go west after peppering your burglar. Well, I must go home now, 'cause I run the family, since Pa lit out. Say, send some of your most expensive canned fruit and things over to the house. Darn the expense.” And the bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walked out. CHAPTER XXV.