Page:Stringer - Lonely O'Malley.djvu/270

 himself: "And I guess I got even with the old stiff, for a-tattlin' about me swimmin' in the reservoir!"

And again Lonely chuckled to himself, though the drift of it all seemed slightly above the heads of his auditors.

"But the out-and-out worst thing that happened about that Catfish Spring was the time the Johnson baby got lost. They could n't find that baby anywheres, though they hunted for days, and then for weeks. And in the end they all thought it must have been carried off by gypsies, or mebbe the circus folks had got it. Well, one day the hired man let go his holt on the water-jug, as he was dippin' out of the spring, and he had to get the garden-rake to fish it out. He got the rake-teeth caught on the jug all right—least so it seemed to him, but that jug appeared uncommon heavy to him. It was about all he could do, I guess, to get her to the top. He made a grab down to catch it before it sunk, and the first thing he knew he had grabbed hold of a stone hand!"

Lonely had a trick of making his voice go hollow and low, when he delivered himself of