"So you're not dead!
So you're not dead, the Lord be praised, but only hurt!"
"Hurt?" says the Parson. "Not a bit of it--or only in my feelings.
Oh, 'tis the handkerchief you're looking at? I put that up against
sunstroke. But whatever do these dreadful sounds mean? Tell me the
worst, Calvin, I implore you!"
"Oh, as for that," says my grandfather cheerfully, "the Frenchman's
the worst by a long way--not but what your good lady made noise
enough when she thought you'd been made away with: and afterwards,
when she went upstairs and, taking a glance out of window, spied a
long black coffin laid out under the lilac bushes, I'm told you could
hear her a mile away. But she've been weakening this half-hour: her
nature couldn't keep it up: whereas the longer we keep that
Frenchman, the louder he seems to bellow."
"Heaven defend us, Calvin!"--the Parson's eyes fairly rolled in his
head--"are you gone clean crazed? Frenchman! What Frenchman?"
"The same that frightened Mrs. Polwhele, Sir, upon the coach.
We caught him drawing maps of the river, and very nigh tucked him in
Sam Trewhella's sean: and now he's in your tool-shed right and tight,
and here's the key, Sir, making so bold, that you gave me this
morning.
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