against the window, and my heart was in my mouth. I thought 'twas a
warnin' much as ever I thought anything in my life; the night before
my mother died 'twas in that same room and against that same winder
there came two or three raps, and my sister Drew and me we looked at
each other, and turned cold all over, and mother set right up in bed
the next night and looked at that winder and then laid back dead. I
was all sole alone the other evenin',--Wednesday it was,--and when I
heard them raps I mustered up, and went and put my head out o' the
door, and I couldn't see nothing, and when I went back, knock--knock,
it begun again, and I went to the door and harked. I hoped I should
hear somebody or 'nother comin' along the road, and then I heard
somethin' a rus'lin' amongst the sunflowers and hollyhocks, and then
there was a titterin', and come to find out 'twas that young one. I
chased her up the road till my wind give out, and I had to go and set
on the stone wall, and come to. She won't go to bed till she's a mind
to. One night I was up there this spring, and she never come in until
after nine o'clock, a dark night, too; and the pore old lady was in
distress, and thought she'd got into the river. I says to myself there
wa'n't no such good news. She told how she'd be'n up into Jake an'
Martin's oaks, trying to catch a little screech owl. She belongs with
wild creatur's, I do believe,--just the same natur'. She'd better be
kept to school, 'stead o' growin' up this way; but she keeps the rest
o' the young ones all in a brile, and this last teacher wouldn't have
her there at all. She'd toll off half the school into the pasture at
recess time, and none of 'em would get back for half an hour."

"What's a tick-tack? I don't remember," asked the doctor, who had been
smiling now and then at this complaint.

"They tie a nail to the end of a string, and run it over a bent pin