you have killed me, but I forgive you,’ and then rolled around, and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make foam.  Well, Pa was all broke up.  He said, ’Great God, what have I done?  I have broke his spinal column.  O, my poor boy, do not die!’ I kept chewing the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the stummick as he bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, ’Too late, Pa, I die at the hand of an assassin.  Go for a doctor.’  Pa throwed his coat over me, and started down stairs on a run, ‘I have murdered my brave boy,’ and he told Ma to go up stairs and stay with me, cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a blood vessel, and he went after a doctor.  When he went out the front door, I sat up and lit a cigarette, and Ma came up and I told her all about how I fooled Pa, and if she would take on and cry, when Pa got back, I would get him to go to church again, and swear off drinking, and she said she would.

[Illustration:  “Too late, pa, I die at the hand of an assassin!”]

“So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a velocipede I used to ride, which was in the store-room, and she had her apron over her face, and she just more than bellowed.  Pa he was pale, and he told the doc. he was just playing with me with a little piece of board, and he heard something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling off the trunk.  The doctor wanted to feel where my spine got broke, but I opened my eyes and had a vacant kind of stare, like a woman who leads a dog by a string, and looked as though my mind was wandering, and I told the doctor there was no use setting my spine, as it was broke in several places, and I wouldn’t let him feel of the dried bladder.  I told Pa I was going to die, and I wanted him to promise me two things on my dying bed.  He cried and said he would, and I told him to promise me he would quit drinking, and attend church regular, and he said he would never drink another drop, and would go to church every Sunday.  I made him get down on his knees beside me and swear it, and the doc. witnessed it, and Ma said she was so glad, and Ma called the doctor out in the hall and told him the joke, and the doc. came in and told Pa he was afraid Pa’s presence would excite the patient, and for him to put on his coat and go out and walk around the block, or go to church, and Ma and he would remove me to another room, and do all that was possible to make my last hours pleasant.  Pa he cried, and said he would put on his plug hat and go to church, and he kissed me, and got flour on his nose, and I came near laughing right out, to see the white flour on his red nose, when I thought how the people in church would laugh at Pa.  But he went out feeling mighty bad, and then I got up and