"Poor Jake is killed, sure," we
says. We was scared through and through, and broke
for the tobacker field and hid there, trembling so our
clothes would hardly stay on; and just as we skipped
in there, a couple of men went tearing by, and into the
bunch they went, and in a second out jumps four men
and took out up the road as tight as they could go,
two chasing two.
We laid down, kind of weak and sick, and listened
for more sounds, but didn't hear none for a good while
but just our hearts. We was thinking of that awful
thing laying yonder in the sycamores, and it seemed
like being that close to a ghost, and it give me the cold
shudders. The moon come a-swelling up out of the
ground, now, powerful big and round and bright, be-
hind a comb of trees, like a face looking through prison
bars, and the black shadders and white places begun to
creep around, and it was miserable quiet and still and
night-breezy and graveyardy and scary. All of a sud-
den Tom whispers:
"Look! -- what's that?"
"Don't!" I says. "Don't take a person by sur-
prise that way. I'm 'most ready to die, anyway, with-
out you doing that."
"Look, I tell you. It's something coming out of
the sycamores."
"Don't, Tom!"
"It's terrible tall!"
"Oh, lordy-lordy! let's --"
"Keep still -- it's a-coming this way."
He was so excited he could hardly get breath enough
to whisper.
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