"Silence, Aunt Jerusha, and receive my parting instructions. Tell Blue-Eyes that I love her madly, but not to blame herself for my untimely end. The ruin of her dress was only the last drop in the cup—the last straw on the camel's back. Farewell!" and as she threw up her arms and shrieked to me to desist, I rolled up my eyes—and sprang from the beam.

For a moment I thought myself dead. The experience was different from what I had anticipated. Instead of feeling choked, I had a pain in my legs, and it seemed to me that I had been[89] shut together like an opera-glass. Still I knew that I must be dead, and I kept very quiet until the sound of little screams and gurgles of—what?—laughter, smote my ears!

[89]

Then I opened my eyes and looked about. I was not dangling in the air overhead, but standing on the threshing-floor, with a bit of broken halter about my neck. The rope had played traitor and given way without even chafing my throat.

I dare say the sight of me, standing there with my eyes closed and looking fully convinced that I was dead, must have [90]been vastly amusing to the two young ladies, who had followed Aunt Jerusha to the door. They laughed as if I had been the prince of clowns, and had just performed a most funny trick in the ring. I began to feel as if I had, too.

[90]

Aunt rushed forward and gave me a shake.

"Another blunder, John," she said; "it's plain as the nose on a man's face that Providence never intended you to commit suicide."

And then Blue-Eyes, repressing her mirth, came forward, half shy and half coaxing, and said to me:

"How my sister and I would feel if you had killed yourself on our account! Come! do please show us the way to our boarding-house. Mamma will be so anxious about us."

Cunning witch! she knows, how to twist a man around her little finger.

"Come," she continued, "let me untie this ugly rope."

And I did let her, and picked up my hat to walk with them to the Widow Cooper's.

They made themselves very agreeable on the way—so that I would think no more of hanging myself, I suppose.

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