"Good!  Splendid!  _Now_ we're all right and safe! Did you tell Aunty?"

I was going to say yes; but she chipped in and says:  "About what, Sid?"

"Why, about the way the whole thing was done."

"What whole thing?"

"Why, _the_ whole thing.  There ain't but one; how we set the runaway n***** free—me and Tom."

"Good land!  Set the run—What _is_ the child talking about!  Dear, dear, out of his head again!"

"_No_, I ain't out of my _head_; I know all what I'm talking about.  We _did_ set him free—me and Tom.  We laid out to do it, and we _done_ it.  And we done it elegant, too."  He'd got a start, and she never checked him up, just set and stared and stared, and let him clip along, and I see it warn't no use for _me_ to put in.  "Why, Aunty, it cost us a power of work—weeks of it—hours and hours, every night, whilst you was all asleep. And we had to steal candles, and the sheet, and the shirt, and your dress, and spoons, and tin plates, and case-knives, and the warming-pan, and the grindstone, and flour, and just no end of things, and you can't think what work it was to make the saws, and pens, and inscriptions, and one thing or another, and you can't think _half_ the fun it was.  And we had to make up the pictures of coffins and things, and nonnamous letters from the robbers, and get up and down the lightning-rod, and dig the hole into the cabin, and made the rope ladder and send it in cooked up in a pie, and send in spoons and things to work with in your apron pocket—"

"Mercy sakes!"

"—and load up the cabin with rats and snakes and so on, for company for Jim; and then you kept Tom here so long with the butter in his hat that you come near spiling the whole business, because the men come before we was out of the cabin, and we had to rush, and they heard us and let drive at us, and I got my share, and we dodged out of the path and let them go by, and when the dogs come they warn't interested in us, but went for the most noise, and we got our canoe, and made for the raft, and was all safe, and Jim was a free man, and we done it all by ourselves, and _wasn't_ it bully, Aunty!"