and came back without it. "It must have slipped off his tail," I said,
and so I didn't know where it was. This honest, straightforward little
story made father so angry that he exclaimed with heavy, foreboding
emphasis: "The very deevil's in that boy!" David, who had been playing
with me and was perhaps about as responsible for the loss of the whip
as I was, said never a word, for he was always prudent enough to hold
his tongue when the parental weather was stormy, and so escaped nearly
all punishment. And, strange to say, this time I also escaped, all
except a terrible scolding, though the thrashing weather seemed darker
than ever. As if unwilling to let the sun see the shameful job,
father took me into the cabin where the storm was to fall, and sent
David to the woods for a switch. While he was out selecting the
switch, father put in the spare time sketching my play-wickedness in
awful colors, and of course referred again and again to the place
prepared for bad boys. In the midst of this terrible word-storm,
dreading most the impending thrashing, I whimpered that I was only
playing because I couldn't help it; didn't know I was doing wrong;
wouldn't do it again, and so forth. After this miserable dialogue was
about exhausted, father became impatient at my brother for taking so
long to find the switch; and so was I, for I wanted to have the thing
over and done with. At last, in came David, a picture of open-hearted
innocence, solemnly dragging a young bur-oak sapling, and handed the
end of it to father, saying it was the best switch he could find. It
was an awfully heavy one, about two and a half inches thick at the
butt and ten feet long, almost big enough for a fence-pole. There
wasn't room enough in the cabin to swing it, and the moment I saw it I
burst out laughing in the midst of my fears. But father failed to see
the fun and was very angry at David, heaved the bur-oak outside and
passionately demanded his reason for fetching "sic a muckle rail like
that instead o' a switch? Do ye ca' that a switch? I have a gude mind