Shivering, we followed her up the hill, the spectators of the tragedy, who by this time had come around the pond, trailing after.  Nancy was not among them.  Inside the shanty into which we were thrust were two small children crawling about the floor, and the place was filled with steam from a wash-tub against the wall and a boiler on the stove.  With a vigorous injunction to make themselves scarce, the Irishwoman slammed the door in the faces of the curious and ordered us to remove our clothes.  Grits was put to bed in a corner, while Tom and I, provided with various garments, huddled over the stove.  There fell to my lot the red flannel shirt which I had seen on the clothes-line.  She gave us hot coffee, and was back at her wash-tub in no time at all, her entire comment on a proceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravity being, “By’s will be by’s!” The final ironical touch was given the anti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief of the head-hunters himself!  He had lingered perforce with his brothers and sister outside the cabin until dinner time, and when he came in he was meek as Moses.

Thus the ready hospitality of the poor, which passed over the heads of Tom and me as we ate bread and onions and potatoes with a ravenous hunger.  It must have been about two o’clock in the afternoon when we bade good-bye to our preserver and departed for home....

At first we went at a dog-trot, but presently slowed down to discuss the future looming portentously ahead of us.  Since entire concealment was now impossible, the question was,—­how complete a confession would be necessary?  Our cases, indeed, were dissimilar, and Tom’s incentive to hold back the facts was not nearly so great as mine.  It sometimes seemed to me in those days unjust that the Peterses were able on the whole to keep out of criminal difficulties, in which I was more or less continuously involved:  for it did not strike me that their sins were not those of the imagination.  The method of Tom’s father was the slipper.  He and Tom understood each other, while between my father and myself was a great gulf fixed.  Not that Tom yearned for the slipper; but he regarded its occasional applications as being as inevitable as changes in the weather; lying did not come easily to him, and left to himself he much preferred to confess and have the matter over with.  I have already suggested that I had cultivated lying, that weapon of the weaker party, in some degree, at least, in self-defence.

Tom was loyal.  Moreover, my conviction would probably deprive him for six whole afternoons of my company, on which he was more or less dependent.  But the defence of this case presented unusual difficulties, and we stopped several times to thrash them out.  We had been absent from dinner, and doubtless by this time Julia had informed Tom’s mother of the expedition, and anyone could see that our clothing had been wet.  So I lingered in no little anxiety behind the Peters stable while he made the investigation.  Our spirits rose considerably when he returned to report that Julia had unexpectedly been a trump, having quieted his mother by the surmise that he was spending the day with his Aunt Fanny.  So far, so good.  The problem now was to decide upon what to admit.  For we must both tell the same story.