After a moment of silence he exclaimed: 

“Gosh!  It’s awful lonesome here!  Gee whittaker! this is the worst place I ever saw!”

I tried to think of something that I could say for it.

“We have got a new corn sheller,” I said, rather timidly.

“I don’t care about your corn shellers,” he answered with a look of scorn.

He took a little yellow paper-covered book from his pocket and began to read to himself.

I felt thoroughly ashamed of the place and sat near him and, for a time, said nothing as he read.

“What’s that?” I ventured to ask by and by.

“A story,” he answered.  “I met that ragged ol’ woman in the road t’other day an’ she give me a lot of ’em an’ showed me the pictures an’ I got to readin’ ’em.  Don’t you tell anybody ‘cause my ol’ dad hates stories an’ he’d lick me ’til I couldn’t stan’ if he knew I was readin’ ’em.”

I begged him to read out loud and he read from a tale of two robbers named Thunderbolt and Lightfoot who lived in a cave in the mountains.  They were bold, free, swearing men who rode beautiful horses at a wild gallop and carried guns and used them freely and with unerring skill, and helped themselves to what they wanted.

He stopped, by and by, and confided to me the fact that he thought he would run away and join a band of robbers.

“How do you run away?” I asked.

“Just take the turnpike and keep goin’ toward the mountains.  When ye meet a band o’ robbers give ’em the sign an’ tell ’em you want to join.”

He went on with the book and read how the robbers had hung a captive who had persecuted them and interfered with their sport.  The story explained how they put the rope around the neck of the captive and threw the other end of it over the limb of a tree and pulled the man into the air.

He stopped suddenly and demanded:  “Is there a long rope here?”

I pointed to Uncle Peabody’s hay rope hanging on a peg.

“Le’s hang a captive,” he proposed.

At first I did not comprehend his meaning.  He got the rope and threw its end over the big beam.  Our old shepherd dog had been nosing the mow near us for rats.  Amos caught the dog who, suspecting no harm, came passively to the rope’s end.  He tied the rope around the dog’s neck.

“We’ll draw him up once—­it won’t hurt him any,” he proposed.

I looked at him in silence.  My heart smote me, but I hadn’t the courage to take issue with the owner of a silver watch.  When the dog began to struggle I threw my arms about him and cried.  Aunt Deel happened to be near.  She came and saw Amos pulling at the rope and me trying to save the dog.

“Come right down off’m that mow—­this minute,” said she.

When we had come down and the dog had followed pulling the rope after him, Aunt Deel was pale with anger.

“Go right home—­right home,” said she to Amos.