Herminie Templeton

“ Without waiting for a reply, Bobby Smithers, the treacherous aborigine, clutching his buttonless trousers, slid down from the woodpile and disappeared behind the fence. For some time William sat anxiously waiting the commencement of the deadly hostilities. But he waited in vain. The benevolent-looking old man in the garden continued digging and serenely whistled a revival hymn as he dug. ”

“ Yes, I know,” said the admiring William, as the warrior regained his equilibrium; “it makes a feller as limber as a circus actor.
“Well,” he went on solemnly, “as I was following the man round, he turned all of a suddint, and his white whiskers put me in mind of ghosts; so I ses, 'Mister, do you know any true ghost stories?' and he ses 'Do you know where I can get a chaw er terbacker?' 'N' I ses 'No,' and then he ses, 'Well, I do. Yer pa's coat is hangin' on the knob of the kitchen door and there's a big hunk in the right hand pocket. ”

“ Jones turned. “What did he do to Billy?” he asked. Instantly a group formed in front of Mrs. Davis' picket gate; there, under the elm tree, Bobby Smithers began his memorable argument for the defence. So well did the orator plead his case that, before his speech was over, acquittal was assured. When he had done, Mr. Jones stood a moment in deep thought; then, having fished a nickel from the depths of his trousers' pocket, he said with a touch of sternness:
“Go back and finish your swimming, William Henry; then go and buy your popcorn; but the next scrape you get into, you'll ketch it good. ”

“ The old man leaned confidentially forward on his spade. “Bekase,” he said impressively, “I'm saving that little spot for a boy I know what I'm mighty sorry for. It ain't every boy I'd let dig for me—no, nor man nuther. But when I have to purtend and by purtendin' get a friend of mine a good lickin', the least I kin do is to save him a soft little piece of ground to dig up. So I saved——”
“You're a-skeered of the bees, that's what,” crowed William Henry.
It was plain from his look that the Ghost Fighter was wounded in the most sensitive part of his nature. ”

“ He never went to the house any more. Next day some people moved into the house and lived in it, and the man sold it for more'n a thousand dollars. The man's got the money yet. He don't need to work. He just digs gardens in the Summer and chops wood and sweeps snow in the Winter to make believe he's poor, so as to fool the robbers.”
William paused for breath and went on:
“When the man told me all that, he began scraping mud off'n his boots with the spade, and ses he to me, ses he, 'You look like a boy that ain't afeared o' nothin'. ”

“ Well, first the ghost was s'prised, he was, for people ginerally lit out at the first screech, and so when he saw the man coming for him, the skellington got scared himself, he did, and slid off the other side of the stove to the floor. But the man chased around after him.
“Well, the ghost kep' a running round the stove and the man kep' chasing him with the poker, and every jump the ghost med it guv a holler, an' every holler it guv it got a crack from the poker. All the time its chains kep' rattling something frightful. ”

“ The interview in the woodshed did not last long, but the injustice of it rankled after the physical smart had passed.
“It's bad enough to have to take a lickin' when ye've done suthin',” he complained tearfully to the old red rooster which had stood at the woodshed door, a startled witness to the pain and humiliating spectacle of his punishment. “I won't stand it no longer, I won't. I'll run away from home ”

“ Some of the bees had found their way inside his trousers' legs; others had crept inside the collar of his shirt, while a score of others were making busy within his shirt sleeves. Up and down, and round and round he danced, kicking aimlessly in all directions and striking savagely at unseen adversaries, all the while accompanying his movements with screams of “Help! Murder! Fire! Pe (illegible text) ”
It could not have been more than three minutes before William's father rescued the Ghost Fighter, but in that time an eager crowd had swarmed through the front gate, [trampl] ing over Mrs. ”