the new letter, but didn't need to, because we knowed as much about it as anybody did, and as soon as we was half up stairs and her back was turned we slid for the cellar cupboard and loaded up a good lunch and took it up to our room and went to bed, and got up about half-past eleven, and Tom put on Aunt Sally's dress that he stole and was going to start with the lunch, but says: “Where's the butter?” “I laid out a hunk of it,” I says, “on a piece of a corn-pone.” “Well, you _left_ it laid out, then--it ain't here.” “We can get along without it,” I says. “We can get along _with_ it, too,” he says; “just you slide down cellar and fetch it.  And then mosey right down the lightning-rod and come along. I'll go and stuff the straw into Jim's clothes to represent his mother in disguise, and be ready to _baa_ like a sheep and shove soon as you get there.” So out he went, and down cellar went I. The hunk of butter, big as a person's fist, was where I had left it, so I took up the slab of corn-pone with it on, and blowed out my light, and started up stairs very stealthy, and got up to the main floor all right, but here comes Aunt Sally with a candle, and I clapped the truck in my hat, and clapped my hat on my head, and the next second she see me; and she says: “You been down cellar?” “Yes'm.” “What you been doing down there?” “Noth'n.” “_Noth'n!_” “No'm.” “Well, then, what possessed you to go down there this time of night?” “I don't know 'm.” “You don't _know_?  Don't answer me that way. Tom, I want to know what you been _doing_ down there.” “I hain't been doing a single thing, Aunt Sally, I hope to gracious if I have.” I reckoned she'd let me go now, and as a generl thing she would; but I s'pose there was so many strange things going on she was just in a sweat about every little thing that warn't yard-stick straight; so she says, very decided: “You just march into that setting-room and stay there till I come.  You been up to something you no business to,