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Dear 2024l Online Casino: The Top Choice of Smart Bettors! CHAPTER XVI.—MOSES HAS EXCITING EXPERIENCES.,While the strains of this enlivening classic were issuing from the asthmatic instrument, Moses and Betty in the more secular atmosphere of the hall were trying to fit the time to “Old Dan Tucker” their favorite dance.,Another time he would have gone quickly enough, for he liked work as little as the average boy, often shirked it; though when he forgot himself in his task, the joy of doing it well held him to it. But May Nell’s coming and the added expense still troubled him; and it was a resolute face he turned to his mother. “No, mamma, you shan’t get down on your marrow bones to these old floors. It’s only me that needs to go on the knees, you know.” His eyes twinkled.,“I knew it!” Billy panted feverishly. “The Ha’nt!” Heedless of the dog running with his nose close to the ground, Billy rushed on. His shirt was torn, his trousers hanging by one suspender, his shoes cut and one tap turned back. Ashes whitened his hair; though at the back a dark mat was still damp from oozing blood,—the handkerchief that had bound it had been torn off by a twitching twig. His smarting eyes watered so that he could hardly see his way. Yet of all this he was unconscious. Weariness, pain, his cracked and bleeding lips,—he knew nothing of them, felt nothing.,He went on, a little cautiously now, and shortly came in view of the “Ha’nt,” a sinister though imposing house, built of cut stone, close against the face of the most picturesque mountain of the range, bounding Vina Valley. The windows were curtained with cobwebs and dust. For years the wide front door had been nailed up with the same sun-bleached boards; and “Keep out!” spoke from every gray splinter.，“Maria, where is St. Elmo?” asked Mrs. Mifsud, as with flushed face she basted some fowls in the oven.，Before they turned into Main Street, however, the procession was in fair alignment, and the solemnity of the moment hushed all chatter. Billy’s most personal disappointment was Bouncer, who, unhappy because he could not caper in freedom at Billy’s heels, let his lovely, bushy tail, that usually waved above his back in a graceful curve, hang limp and dusty between his legs; while from drooping head and sad eyes, he looked reproachfully at Billy every time the latter ran past.，THE place Billy called the Fo’castle was a tiny room in the sloping windmill tower. It was level with the second floor of the house, and a narrow, railed bridge connected it with a door in his mother’s room. Under it was the above-ground cellar, overhead the big tank. Still higher whirled the great white wings that pumped the beauty-giving water to lawn and gardens.“Then where are they?” demanded Mrs. Wopp. “You are as bad as Anias and Sapphire who was carried out feet foremost. Go when I tell you. An’ you Betty, go upstairs an’ mend that orful, yawnin’ gap in yer stockin’. Now we hev got rid of the younguns Howard, will you read out what you was larfin’ at?”

“It’s a terrible disease, shorely,” interpolated Mrs. Wopp. “Ebenezer’s sisten-in-law’s cousin hed it, an’ fer a long time she was as yaller as a biled turnip. Her feelin’s was low, too, an’ she thort she was goin’ to die. She made her will, leavin’ her clothes an’ her cat, which was all she hed, to an ole men’s refuge. But lan’ sakes! she’s alive yet an’ peart as a robin. She got a set o’ false teeth an’ a switch jist larst month.”,“This peacock,” went on Betty, showing the picture of a bird with plumed tail outspread, “is the white peacock of the moon. It lives in the moon, but when fairies want to come to play with li’l girls, they harness the peacock an’ drive down to earth in a silver chariot.”,They tied the horses, and once hidden from the road, shed every superfluous garment. Billy was quite ashamed of the chill he could not help when he saw the handcuffs, pistols, and cartridges disposed neatly and conveniently about the Sheriff’s waist. They looked so vicious, “disrespectable.”,“I’m tho thorry, I wanted to hear more about the fairieth.” Lila Williams would have braved the elements to listen to more of Betty’s original stories.,Billy cuddled down in the low-growing manzanitas, whose screen was further thickened by a tangle of wild pea vines all a-bloom. Placing himself so that he could watch both the house and the man on the hill, he settled to await further disclosures.,“Gosh!” he exclaimed, as Isobel closed on the last startlingly unexpected note, “that’s where some feller planks his strawr hat on a beauty butterfly!”,“Billy Boy, it’s fine! It’s splendid! But it’s so big I’m afraid Buzz will be scared.”,Her absorption hypnotized the others to wondering stillness. In a moment her attitude and intensity had transported them to the mysterious East, and put upon them the spell of ancient superstitions.,“O, Mar, jist a teeny-weeny brown crust, it carn’t hurt me.”,“My religion’s purty well wartered now, I guess,” said Moses, sheepishly, to Clarence, who met him at the end of the fateful corridor. That youth had followed his country friend from the Sunday-school hall, but not in time to direct his erring steps.,“Will you please play it fer us then, it is so touchin’. You will find the music on the organ.”,“I’ll wrestle with you first chance,” he challenged; “but you wouldn’t have any show, your dress is so long. Why do you have ’em so?”.