"Well, it does beat--"

     "Laws alive, I never--"

     "So help me, I wouldn't a be--"

     "HOUSE-thieves as well as--"

     "Goodnessgracioussakes, I'd a ben afeard to live in sich a--"

     "'Fraid to LIVE!--why, I was that scared I dasn't hardly go to bed, or get up, or lay down, or SET down, Sister Ridgeway. Why, they'd steal the very--why, goodness sakes, you can guess what kind of a fluster I was in by the time midnight come last night. I hope to gracious if I warn't afraid they'd steal some o' the family! I was just to that pass I didn't have no reasoning faculties no more. It looks foolish enough NOW, in the daytime; but I says to myself, there's my two poor boys asleep, 'way up stairs in that lonesome room, and I declare to goodness I was that uneasy 't I crep' up there and locked 'em in! I DID. And anybody would. Because, you know, when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits gets to addling, and you get to doing all sorts o' wild things, and by and by you think to yourself, spos'n I was a boy, and was away up there, and the door ain't locked, and you--" She stopped, looking kind of wondering, and then she turned her head around slow, and when her eye lit on me--I got up and took a walk.