"Oh, tell us a story!" Alice cried.

"Please do!" added Keineth. It would make them all forget to feel cross
toward Billy!

So, chuckling a little under his breath, Mr. Lee began:

"Down in our village old Cy Addington had a calf he'd entered in the
County Fair. He'd set his heart on that calf's winning a prize--all the
other farmers had told him it would. It was black as jet with just a
little white mark on its fore quarter. He tended that calf like a baby
and spent hours at a time getting it all in shape for the Fair. Well,
the night before the Fair opened two boys--bad boys they were--stole
that calf out of its shed, took it off in some woods where they had a
lantern and a can of paint hidden under a log. What do you think they
did? Painted the animal white--snow white--every bit of him! Then they
took him to the graveyard and tied him to a tombstone!"

"Oh, Daddy, how dreadful!" cried Alice.

"Then what happened?" demanded Keineth and Peggy in one voice.

"Well, a lot of things happened, and they happened fast! Miss Cymantha
Jones, a nervous spinster, was walking home from Widow Markham's
house--rather late, but she'd been caring for the widow through a sick
spell. And Miss Cymantha saw that calf jumping around among the
tombstones and thought it was a ghost! She let out such screams that it
brought Charley, the old sexton, running to the door in his night
shirt, and he saw the calf, and Miss Cymantha scuttling down the road
screaming and holding her skirts high so's she could run faster, and I