Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/234

 Lonely held up a hand, airily, as though to warn back the preacher, the impatient Miss Mehetabel, and the glowering and justly outraged widow Tiffins.

"But that ain't all—oh, that ain't all!" the rapt boy went on, shrilly and breathlessly, intent on unburdening to the uttermost his blackened young soul. "When old BrI mean, when Mister Brennan found that garter-snake in his ice-box, who put it there? Who broke the three panes o' glass in Judge Eby's conservat'ry? Who shot and et the Gubtills' rooster, and stole bologny, and cussed and swore and lied and smoked and let the steam out o' the sawmill ingin? Who put the womper in Widow Tiffins's cistern? Who—"

But precisely at this juncture, a pregnant glance having passed between Ezra Sampson and the glowering widow, the latter seized Lonely by one prominent ear, and sweeping down the narrow aisle with him, plumped him vigorously and humiliatingly into one of the empty wooden benches.

There Lonely, finding himself disgraced and undone by a sudden spasm of unexplainable weeping, fled miserably away from the flaring