Mystery fiction; Sawyer, Tom (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
So he kept on tramping up and down the floor and muttering, till by and
by he begun to look pretty tired; then Benny she went and snuggled up
to his side and put one hand in his and one arm around his waist and
walked with him; and he smiled down on her, and reached down and kissed
her; and so, little by little the trouble went out of his face and she
persuaded him off to his room. They had very petting ways together, and
it was uncommon pretty to see.
Aunt Sally she was busy getting the children ready for bed; so by and
by it got dull and tedious, and me and Tom took a turn in the
moonlight, and fetched up in the watermelon-patch and et one, and had a
good deal of talk. And Tom said he’d bet the quarreling was all
Jubiter’s fault, and he was going to be on hand the first time he got a
chance, and see; and if it was so, he was going to do his level best to
get Uncle Silas to turn him off.
And so we talked and smoked and stuffed watermelons much as two hours,
and then it was pretty late, and when we got back the house was quiet
and dark, and everybody gone to bed.
[Illustration: Smoked and stuffed watermelon]
Tom he always seen everything, and now he see that the old green baize
work-gown was gone, and said it wasn’t gone when he went out; so he
allowed it was curious, and then we went up to bed.
We could hear Benny stirring around in her room, which was next to
ourn, and judged she was worried a good deal about her father and
couldn’t sleep. We found we couldn’t, neither. So we set up a long
time, and smoked and talked in a low voice, and felt pretty dull and
down-hearted. We talked the murder and the ghost over and over again,
and got so creepy and crawly we couldn’t get sleepy nohow and noway.
By and by, when it was away late in the night and all the sounds was
late sounds and solemn, Tom nudged me and whispers to me to look, and I
done it, and there we see a man poking around in the yard like he
didn’t know just what he wanted to do, but it was pretty dim and we
couldn’t see him good. Then he started for the stile, and as he went
over it the moon came out strong, and he had a long-handled shovel over
his shoulder, and we see the white patch on the old work-gown. So Tom
says:
“He’s a-walking in his sleep. I wish we was allowed to follow him and
see where he’s going to. There, he’s turned down by the tobacker-field.
Out of sight now. It’s a dreadful pity he can’t rest no better.”
We waited a long time, but he didn’t come back any more, or if he did
he come around the other way; so at last we was tuckered out and went
to sleep and had nightmares, a million of them. But before dawn we was
awake again, because meantime a storm had come up and been raging, and
the thunder and lightning was awful, and the wind was a-thrashing the
trees around, and the rain was driving down in slanting sheets, and the
gullies was running rivers. Tom says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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