"People to _help_ him, Brother Marples!  Well, I reckon you'd _think_ so if you'd a been in this house for a while back.  Why, they've stole everything they could lay their hands on—and we a-watching all the time, mind you. They stole that shirt right off o' the line! and as for that sheet they made the rag ladder out of, ther' ain't no telling how many times they _didn't_ steal that; and flour, and candles, and candlesticks, and spoons, and the old warming-pan, and most a thousand things that I disremember now, and my new calico dress; and me and Silas and my Sid and Tom on the constant watch day _and_ night, as I was a-telling you, and not a one of us could catch hide nor hair nor sight nor sound of them; and here at the last minute, lo and behold you, they slides right in under our noses and fools us, and not only fools _us_ but the Injun Territory robbers too, and actuly gets _away_ with that n***** safe and sound, and that with sixteen men and twenty-two dogs right 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 locked, and we wanted to see the fun, so we went down the lightning-rod, and both of us got hurt a little, and we didn't never want to try _that_ no more.  And then I went on and told her all what I told Uncle Silas before; and then she said she'd forgive us, and maybe it was all right enough anyway, and about what a body might expect of boys, for all boys was a pretty harum-scarum lot as fur as she could see; and so, as long as no harm hadn't come of it, she judged she better put in her time being grateful we was alive and well and she had us still, stead of fretting over what was past and done.  So then she kissed me, and patted me on the head, and dropped into a kind of a brown study; and pretty soon jumps up, and says: