Page:Samantha on Children's Rights.djvu/117

 pretty clost to his house I methought I hearn sunthin' wrong, a rattlin' sound amongst the iron framework of our conveyance, and I mentioned the fact to my pardner. He then intimated that I had frequently called his attentions to similar things on similar occasions (he didn't word it in this way, no, it wuz a shorter way and fur terser).

But I knew I wuz in the right on't, and begged him to git out and see about it. But he vowed he wouldn't git out, he even made a oath to confirm it. "Dum" wuz the word he used to confirm the fact that he would not git out. But the very next minute one of the wheels come off, and he did git out. Yes, he got out, and I did, too. He got out first, and I kinder got out after him. It wuz sudden!

Everything seemed sort o' mixed up and sick to the stomach to me for quite a spell. But when conscientiousness returned I found myself layin' there right in my tracts, and what made it more curious and coincidin' I had a bundle of tracts that her old pasture, Elder Minkley, had sent to Tamer Ann. He worried over her readin' dime novels so much, and he had sent her these tracts, "The Truthful Mother and Child; or, The Liar's Doom," and one wuz, "The Novel Reader's Fate; or, The Crazed Parent."

Well, I lay there feelin' curious, Josiah tryin' to keep the horse from tromplin' on me, and he wuz, I could see, agitated in the extreme about me, though I had said faintly from where I lay:

"I hain't killed, Josiah," and, as he seemed by his looks to doubt my assurance and mourn for me as lost, I sez agin:

"I am not dead, Josiah," and I added in faint axents,