“Mars Sid, you’ll say I’s a fool,
but if I didn’t b’lieve I see most a million
dogs, er devils, er some’n, I wisht I may die
right heah in dese tracks. I did, mos’
sholy. Mars Sid, I felt um—I
felt um, sah; dey was all over me. Dad
fetch it, I jis’ wisht I could git my han’s
on one er dem witches jis’ wunst—on’y
jis’ wunst—it’s all I’d
ast. But mos’ly I wisht dey’d lemme
’lone, I does.”
“Well, I tell you what I think. What makes
them come here just at this runaway nigger’s
breakfast-time? It’s because they’re
hungry; that’s the reason. You make them
a witch pie; that’s the thing for you to
do.”
“But my lan’, Mars Sid, how’s I
gwyne to make ‘m a witch pie? I doan’
know how to make it. I hain’t ever hearn
er sich a thing b’fo’.”
“Well, then, I’ll have to make it myself.”
“Will you do it, honey?—will you?
I’ll wusshup de groun’ und’ yo’
foot, I will!”
“All right, I’ll do it, seeing it’s
you, and you’ve been good to us and showed us
the runaway nigger. But you got to be mighty
careful. When we come around, you turn your
back; and then whatever we’ve put in the pan,
don’t you let on you see it at all. And
don’t you look when Jim unloads the pan—something
might happen, I don’t know what. And above
all, don’t you handle the witch-things.”
“HANNEL ‘m, Mars Sid? What is
you a-talkin’ ‘bout? I wouldn’
lay de weight er my finger on um, not f’r ten
hund’d thous’n billion dollars, I wouldn’t.”
That was all fixed. So then we went away
and went to the rubbage-pile in the back yard, where
they keep the old boots, and rags, and pieces of bottles,
and wore-out tin things, and all such truck, and scratched
around and found an old tin washpan, and stopped up
the holes as well as we could, to bake the pie in,
and took it down cellar and stole it full of flour
and started for breakfast, and found a couple of shingle-nails
that Tom said would be handy for a prisoner to scrabble
his name and sorrows on the dungeon walls with, and
dropped one of them in Aunt Sally’s apron-pocket
which was hanging on a chair, and t’other we
stuck in the band of Uncle Silas’s hat, which
was on the bureau, because we heard the children say
their pa and ma was going to the runaway nigger’s
house this morning, and then went to breakfast, and
Tom dropped the pewter spoon in Uncle Silas’s
coat-pocket, and Aunt Sally wasn’t come yet,
so we had to wait a little while.
And when she come she was hot and red and cross, and
couldn’t hardly wait for the blessing; and then
she went to sluicing out coffee with one hand and
cracking the handiest child’s head with her thimble
with the other, and says:
“I’ve hunted high and I’ve hunted
low, and it does beat all what has become of
your other shirt.”
