to be altogether my fault, because you know I don't see them nor have nothing to do with them except when they're on me; and I don't believe I've ever lost one of them off of me."
"Well, it ain't your fault if you haven't, Silas—you'd a done it if you could, I reckon. And the shirt ain't all that's gone, nuther. Ther's a spoon gone; and that ain't all. There was ten, and now ther's only nine. The calf got the shirt I reckon, but the calf never took the spoon, that's certain."
"Why, what else is gone, Sally?"
"Ther's six candles gone—that's what. The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas—you'd never find it out; but you can't lay the spoon on the rats, and that I know."
"Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes."
"Oh, I wouldn't hurry, next year'll do. Matilda Angelina Araminta Phelps!"
Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any. Just then, the nigger woman steps on to the passage, and says:
"Missus, dey's a sheet gone."
"A sheet gone! Well, for the land's sake!"
"I'll stop up them holes to-day," says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful.
"Oh, do shet up!—s'pose the rats took the sheet? Where's it gone, Lize?"
"Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss Sally. She wuz on de clo's-line yistiddy, but she done gone; she ain' dah no mo', now."
"I reckon the world is coming to an end. I never see the
