Well, the day came, and, still wondering where those pants were to come
from, I went out in the yard where a man was painting a window-shutter
that had blown off a back window. Right before my eyes was the woodhouse
door wide open, and something said to me:

"Walk in."

I walked in; and there in a corner on a woodpile was a real nice pair of
pants, and a collar and cravat, and a coat and a tin lunch-bucket, which
had been eaten--the lunch had. And when I saw those pants I knew Katie
Freeman was fixed.

They belonged to the man who was painting the shutter.

It was an awful hot day, and he had taken them off in the woodhouse and
put on his overalls, and when he wasn't looking I slipped out with them,
and went up to Miss Bray's room. She was down-stairs talking to Miss
Jones, and I hid them under the mattress of her bed.

I knew when she found they were missing she'd turn to me to know where
they were. No matter what went wrong, from the cat having kittens or the
chimney smoking, she looked to me as the cause. And if there was to be
any searching, No. 4--I sleep in No. 4 when Miss Katherine is
away--would be the first thing searched. So I put them under her bed.

I wish Miss Katherine could have seen that man about six o'clock, when
the time came for him to go home. She would have laughed, too. She
couldn't have helped it.