say nothing about that cistern. So I busts out bellering fresher'n ever, and I says:
"He was drunk, and he come home drunk, and he done it then, and that's how he done it," I says.
"And you seen him?" she says. I nodded.
"Where is he?" says she and Elmira, both to oncet.
But I was scared to say nothing about that there cistern, so I jest bawled some more.
"Was it in the blacksmith shop?" says Mis' Alexander. I nodded my head agin and let it go at that.
"Is he in there now?" asts Mis' Alexander. I nodded agin. I hadn't meant to give out no untrue stories. But a kid will always tell a lie, not meaning to tell one, if you sort of invite him with questions like that, and get him scared the way you're acting. Besides, I says to myself, "so long as Hank has turned into a corpse and that makes him dead, what's the difference whether he's in the blacksmith shop or not?" Fur I hadn't had any plain idea, being such a little kid, that a corpse meant to be dead, and wasn't sure what being dead was like, neither, except they had funerals over you then. I knowed being a corpse must be some sort of a big disadvantage from the way Elmira always says keep away from that cistern door or I'll be one. But if they was going to be a funeral in our house, I'd feel kind o' important, too. They didn't have em every day in our town, and we hadn't never had one of our own.
So Mis' Alexander, she led Elmira into the house, both a-crying, and Mis' Alexander trying to comfort her, and me a tagging along behind holding onto Elmira's skirts and sniffling into them. And in a few minutes all them women Mis' Rogers has told come filing into that room, one at a time, looking sad. Only Old Mis' Primrose, she was awful late getting there because she stopped to put on her bunnet she always wore to funerals with the black Paris lace on it her cousin Arminty White had sent her from Chicago.
When they found out Hank had come home with licker in him and done it himself, they was all excited, and they all crowds around and asts me how, except two as is holding onto Elmira's hands which sets moaning in a chair. And they all asts me
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