“’Yes, I know you be; and I hain’t never said you ain’t as pooty a cretur as walks the airth:  but I wish you wan’t so awful changeable.’

“Then I laffed right out, to think I was talking to a lot of flowers same as if they was a gal; and, when I done laffin’, I went down on my knees, and begun to pick ’em.  But I hadn’t more than got the first fist-ful when I heerd a groan, a sort uv a faint holler groan, that sounded as if it come right out uv the ground underneath me.  I dropped the flowers, and riz right up on eend.  My ha’r riz too; for I was scaart, I tell you.  ‘But,’ thinks I, ’’twon’t do to run away the fust lick:’  so I held on, and pooty soon it come agin.  This time I listened sharp, and had my wits about me; so that, when it wor through, I clim’ right up to the top uv the ledge, and looked down into the valley, hollerin’—­

“‘Who be you?  Is any one thar?’

“A voice answered, faint and weak; but what it said, or whar it was, I couldn’t for the life of me tell.

“So I hollered agin,—­

“‘Whar be you, stranger?  Holler as loud as you kin!’

“The voice answered back; and I heerd my own name, and, as I thought, in a voice that turned me as sick and weak as a gal.

“It was Harnah’s voice; and my first idee was that she wor dead, and wor ha’nting me.

“‘Harnah!’ says I, soft and low, ‘is it you?’

“There wa’n’t no answer, but another groan, and along of it a curious kind of noise, like a lot of cats all growling together.  I knowed that noise; and, afore it eended, I knowed whar it come from.  And, all to once, the hull story come to me:  Harnah was down thar in a painter’s den; and the kittens was a-growling round her.  The old ones must be away, or one of ’em would ’a been out to see to me afore this.

“I hadn’t the fust thing in the way of a we’pon with me; but there was plenty of stones down in the hollow, and I cut a good oak-sapling with my jack-knife.  Then I sot myself to scramble down the face of the clift; and, I tell you, I sweat before I got to the bottom.  Ef it hadn’t been for Harnah, I couldn’t ’a done it; but, somehow or ’nother, I reached the bottom, and looked about me.  Sure enough, close to my feet was the mouth of a cave, running right in under the ledge, though not more than three foot high.  I knelt down and peeked in, calling,—­

“‘Harnah, be you thar?’

“‘Seth, is it you?’ asked a voice very faint.

“‘Yes, my dear, it is,’ says I, ’and bound to get you out uv this scrape about the quickest.  What’s a-keeping you in there?’

“‘My leg is broke, and the horrid creature is lying on my feet!’ says Harnah.

“I didn’t wait for no more questions, but crawled inter the hole.  A dozen feet from the mouth, I come to a snarl of fur, and glary eyes, and snapping teeth, and savage growls, that I finally made out to be a couple of painter-kittens, not more’n a few days old, but savage enough for a hundred.  They was snuggled close up to something:  what it was I couldn’t at fust make out in the darkness; but putty soon I see that it was a full-grown painter, lying stretched out at length.  I started back, with all the blood in me pricking at my fingers’ ends with the scare I’d got; but Harnah’s voice from beyond says,—­