My plan instantly
and fully developed. Quickly I returned to the house and hastily
gathered what little clothing I owned into a bundle, done up in my
one handkerchief, an imitation of bandanna, of very loud pattern.
This bundle I secreted in the barn and then hied me to the
hornet's nest. Approaching the swinging home of the hornets very
softly, so as not to disturb the inmates, I stuffed the entrance
to the hornet castle with sassafras leaves, and taking the great
sphere in my arms I bore it to a back window of the kitchen where
the black beldame was vigorously at work within and contentedly
droning a negro hymn.
Dark was coming on and a drizzly rain was falling. It was the
spring of the year, the day had been warm and the kitchen window
was open. I stole up to the open window. The woman's back was
toward me. I removed the plug of sassafras leaves and hurled the
hornet's nest so that it landed under the hag's skirts.
I watched the proceedings for one short moment, and then, as it
was getting late, I concluded I had better be off for St. Louis.
So I went away from there at the best gait I could command.
I could hear my arch-enemy screaming, and it was music to my ears
that even thrills me yet, sometimes. It was a better supper than
she would have given me.
I saw the negroes running from the quarters, and elsewhere, toward
the kitchen, and I must beg the reader to endeavor to imagine the
scene in that culinary department, as I am unable to describe it,
not having waited to see it out.
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