firecracker away down cellar in a barrel, and Pa looked scared. I rolled
off the trunk, on the floor, and put some flour on my face, to make me
look pale, and then I kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying on
the stage, after being stabbed with a piece of lath, and groaned, and
said, 'Pa you have killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around,
and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make
foam. Well, Pa was all broke up. He said, 'Great God, what have I done? I
have broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not die!' I kept chewing
the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them
out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the
stummick as he bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then
my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, 'Too late, Pa, I die at the hand
of an assassin. Go for a doctor.' Pa throwed his coat over me, and started
down stairs on a run, 'I have murdered my brave boy,' and he told Ma to go
up stairs and stay with me, cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a
blood vessel, and he went after a doctor. When he went out the front door,
I sat up and lit a cigarette, and Ma came up and I told her all about how
I fooled Pa, and if she would take on and cry, when Pa got back, I would
get him to go to church again, and swear off drinking, and she said she
would.

[Illustration: "TOO LATE, PA, I DIE AT THE HAND OF AN ASSASSIN!"]

"So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a velocipede I used
to ride, which was in the store-room, and she had her apron over her face,
and she just more than bellowed. Pa he was pale, and he told the doc. he
was just playing with me with a little piece of board, and he heard
something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling off the trunk.
The doctor wanted to feel where my spine got broke, but I opened my eyes
and had a vacant kind of stare, like a woman who leads a dog by a string,