I were doomed, and that she would be left a childless widow. I tried
to treat the matter as a joke, and this only made her more wretched.
She said that she could see I really felt as she did, and was only
pretending to be light-hearted for her sake, and she said she would
try and bear it bravely.

The person she chiefly blamed was Buggles.

In the night the clock gave us another warning, and my wife accepted
it for her Aunt Maria, and seemed resigned. She wished, however, that
I had never had the clock, and wondered when, if ever, I should get
cured of my absurd craze for filling the house with tomfoolery.

The next day the clock struck thirteen four times and this cheered her
up. She said that if we were all going to die, it did not so much
matter. Most likely there was a fever or a plague coming, and we
should all be taken together.

She was quite light-hearted over it!

After that the clock went on and killed every friend and relation we
had, and then it started on the neighbors.

It struck thirteen all day long for months, until we were sick of
slaughter, and there could not have been a human being left alive for
miles around.

Then it turned over a new leaf, and gave up murdering folks, and took
to striking mere harmless thirty-nines and forty-ones. Its favorite
number now is thirty-two, but once a day it strikes forty-nine. It