She closed the door and with a snort
Mart piled into bed with me. I gave him
plenty of room and did not introduce
myself. A little more dark silence--the
shaking of the bed under the hilarity
of those astonished, bethrilled, but
thoroughly unfrightened young women in the
dark corner on my left ceased, and again
the door opened. This time it was the
hired man, and I saw that the trouble was
either that neither Mart nor Buck wanted
to sleep with the hired man or that neither
wanted to sleep with me. A long silence
and then the boy Buck slipped in. The
hired man delivered himself with the
intonation somewhat of a circuit rider.

``I've been a-watchin' that star thar,
through the winder. Sometimes hit moves,
then hit stands plum' still, an' ag'in hit gits
to pitchin'.'' The hired man must have
been touching up mean whiskey himself.
Meanwhile, Mart seemed to be having
spells of troubled slumber. He would
snore gently, accentuate said snore with a
sudden quiver of his body and then wake
up with a climacteric snort and start that
would shake the bed. This was repeated
several times, and I began to think of the
unfortunate Tom who was ``fitified.''