gently of the bucket till it was near all gone, an’ then he looks into the bucket expectin’ to find the moon flounderin’ in the bottom of it like a flat fish. 

 “‘She’s gone, bad ’cess to her!’ says he. 

 “‘Try again,’ says me brother, and Buck fills the bucket again, and there was the moon sure enough when the water came to stand still. 

 “‘Go on,’ says me brother. ‘Drain out the wather, but go gentle, or she’ll give yiz the slip again.’ 

 “‘Wan minit,’ says Buck, ‘I’ve got an idea,’ says he; ‘she won’t give me the slip this time,’ says he. ‘You wait for me,’ says he; and off he hobbles to his old mother’s cabin a stone’s-throw away, and back he comes with a sieve. 

 “‘You hold the sieve,’ says Buck, ‘and I’ll drain the water into it; if she ’scapes from the bucket we’ll have her in the sieve.’ And he pours the wather out of the bucket as gentle as if it was crame out of a jug. When all the wather was out he turns the bucket bottom up, and shook it. 

 “‘Ran dan the thing!’ he cries, ‘she’s gone again;’ an’ wid that he flings the bucket into the pond, and the sieve afther the bucket, when up comes his old mother hobbling on her stick. 

 “‘Where’s me bucket?’ says she. 

 “‘In the pond,’ say Buck. 

 “‘And me sieve?’ says she. 

 “‘Gone afther the bucket.’ 

 “‘I’ll give yiz a bucketin’!’ says she; and she up with the stick and landed him a skelp, an’ driv him roarin’ and hobblin’ before her, and locked him up in the cabin, an’ kep’ him on bread an’ wather for a wake to get the moon out of his head; but she might have saved her thruble, for that day month in it was agin—— There she comes!” 

 The moon, argent and splendid, was breaking from the water. She was full, and her light was powerful almost as the light of day. The shadows of the children and the queer shadow of Mr Button were cast on the wall of the caboose hard and black as silhouettes. 

 

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