her to me, sayin', 'Bill dear, I'm a-dyin' and I can't die easy unless I see you befo' I go.' You could 'a knocked me down with a gull's pin-feather, lads, but 'twarn't nothin' to do but go. So I rigs myself up and takes the train and finds her house, an' when I rings, a solemn-lookin' ole woman opens the do' and shows me upstairs as sadlike as if I was goin' to a buryin', and thar in that room on them pillowshams lay the battered hull of that pretty Mary Ann I had knowed when she was a gal. Says she, sort o' dyin'-calf-like, 'Law, Bill, is that you?' And I takes her hand with one of mine, and with the other I draws out my red bandanna and I weeps regular briny tears, and then I talks ole times to sorter cheer her up till I hed to go.
"But, blister my boots, boys, 'bout the time I looks fer one o' them black framed envy-lopes to tell me Mary Ann had slipped over the horizon on her last voyage, here come a pink letter, lads. 'I didn't die,' she writes, 'an' I ain't got no notion o' dyin' now. Seems like that sweet face o' yonrn jus' snatched me from the grave. I'm up and about an', 'cept fer a leetle tech o' lumbago, I'm sound as a ole kittle. A mustard
