his grandmother's absence. Then he sat down on the doorstep and waited
for her to go to sleep.

"If she wakes up and gets out on the road while we're gone, won't I
catch it, though!" he exclaimed to Bud in an undertone.

"Shet the doah," suggested Bud.

"No, she'd sut'n'ly get into some devilmint if she was shet in by
herself," he answered.

"How oft the sight of means to do ill deeds makes ill deeds done!" John
Jay's roving eyes fell on a broken teacup on the window-sill, that Mammy
kept as a catch-all for stray buttons and bits of twine. He remembered
having seen some rusty tacks among the odds and ends. A loose brickbat
stuck up suggestively from the sunken hearth. The idea had not much
sooner popped into his head than the deed was done. Bending over
breathlessly to make sure that the unsuspecting Ivy was asleep, he
nailed her little pink dress to the floor with a row of rusty tacks.
Then cautiously replacing the bit of broken brick, he made for the door,
upsetting Bud in his hasty leave-taking.

Over in the briar-patch, out of sight of the house, two happy little
darkeys played all the afternoon. They beat the ground with the stout
clubs they carried. They pried up logs in search of snakes. They
whooped, they sang, they whistled. They rolled over and over each
other, giggling as they wrestled, in the sheer delight of being alive on
such a day. When they finally killed a harmless little chicken-snake, no
prince of the royal blood, hunting tigers in Indian jungles, could have
been prouder of his striped trophies than they were of theirs.