Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/268

 coldest runnin' water In the county, he says, and evenln's he used to go down to the spring and let that petrlfyin' water run over his ankle-bone. It kept gettin' stiffer and stiffer, and he kept gettin' crankier and crankier, and one night he went to kick my goat Gilead, for eatin' up a pair of his galluses. It was a pretty hard kick. It hit Gilead all right; but Uncle Si's foot snapped off, just like a piece of marble—petrified clean through!

"Then when the Johnsons' new hired man got a sunstroke chasin' my goat out of a beanfield, and had to wash his head every day, to keep down fits, he used to go to the Catfish Spring, 'cause the water was so cool and slickery there. About the third time he 'd washed his head in that water his hair began to stiffen up. Next day it rubbed off like a lot o' mortar."

A stimulating little murmur of wonder flowed and ebbed through the circle.

"But that ain't the queerest thing that happened about that spring. One of the women folks on the next farm put a six-pound roll of butter down in the spring, to get it kind o' cool and hard, and when she come