on their very heels at that very time!  I tell you, it just bangs anything I ever _heard_ of. Why, _sperits_ couldn't a done better and been no smarter. And I reckon they must a _been_ sperits--because, _you_ know our dogs, and ther' ain't no better; well, them dogs never even got on the _track_ of 'm once!  You explain _that_ to me if you can!--_any_ of you!” “Well, it does beat--” “Laws alive, I never--” “So help me, I wouldn't a be--” “_House_-thieves as well as--” “Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--” “'Fraid to _live_!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or _set_ down, Sister Ridgeway.  Why, they'd steal the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight come last night.  I hope to gracious if I warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family!  I was just to that pass I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more.  It looks foolish enough _now_, in the daytime; but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and locked 'em in!  I _did_.  And anybody would. Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you--” She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and took a walk. Says I to myself, I can explain better how we come to not be in that room this morning if I go out to one side and study over it a little.  So I done it.  But I dasn't go fur, or she'd a sent for me.  And when it was late in the day the people all went, and then I come in and told her the noise and shooting waked up me and “Sid,” and the door was loc