This prying little busybody soon ferreted out
the truth of the story, and discovered, by hook and by crook, that I was at
the bottom of the affair, and had locked up the donkey in the smoke-house.
He stopped to inquire no further, for he was one of those testy curmudgeons
with whom unlucky boys are always in the wrong. Leaving old Barbara to
wrestle in imagination with the devil, he made for my bedchamber, where I
still lay wrapped in rosy slumbers, little dreaming of the mischief I had
done, and the storm about to break over me.
"In an instant I was awakened by a shower of thwacks, and started up in
wild amazement, I demanded the meaning of this attack, but received no
other reply than that I had murdered the housekeeper; while my uncle
continued whacking away during my confusion. I seized a poker, and put
myself on the defensive. I was a stout boy for my years, while my uncle was
a little wiffet of a man; one that in Kentucky we would not call even an
'individual'; nothing more than a 'remote circumstance.
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