me the slip this time,' says he. `You wait for me,' says he; and off
he hobbles to his old mother's cabin a stone's-throw away, and
back he comes with a sieve.

"`You hold the sieve,' says Buck, `and I'll drain the water into it; if
she'scapes from the bucket we'll have her in the sieve.' And he
pours the wather out of the bucket as gentle as if it was crame
out of a jug. When all the wather was out he turns the bucket
bottom up, and shook it.

"`Ran dan the thing!' he cries, `she's gone again'; an' wid that he
flings the bucket into the pond, and the sieve afther the bucket,
when up comes his old mother hobbling on her stick.

"`Where's me bucket?' says she.

"`In the pond,' say Buck.

"`And me sieve?' says she.

"`Gone afther the bucket.'

"`I'll give yiz a bucketin!' says she; and she up with the stick and
landed him a skelp, an' driv him roarin' and hobblin' before her,
and locked him up in the cabin, an' kep' him on bread an' wather
for a wake to get the moon out of his head; but she might have
saved her thruble, for that day month in it was agin. . . . There she
comes!"

The moon, argent and splendid, was breaking from the water. She