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My grandfather was sorry enough, and he vowed he wouldn't do so again.
"You'd better not," Patrick grumbled, and he gave him a c.o.c.k of his eye, and a grin of his teeth that sent a s.h.i.+ver down Andrew Coffey's back. It certainly was odd that Andrew Coffey should be there in a thick wood that he had never set eyes on before, roasting Patrick Rooney. You can't wonder that my grandfather thought and thought and forgot the fire.
_"Andrew Coffey!_ _Andrew Coffey!_ I'll punish you for the way you're neglecting me!" Patrick Rooney cried.
He was unslinging himself from the pole now, and his eyes glared and his teeth glistened. My grandfather got up in haste and ran off into the gloomy wood. He stumbled over stones, the brambles tore his clothes, the branches beat his face.
Presently he saw a light and was glad. A minute later he was kneeling by a hearth-side, dazed and bedraggled. The flames leaped and crackled, and he was beginning to get warm and feel a little easy in his mind when he heard a voice shouting, "Andrew Coffey! Andrew Coffey!"
It's hard for a man to jump after going through all my grandfather had, but jump he did. When he looked around, where should he find himself but in the very cabin in which he had first met Patrick.
"Andrew Coffey! Andrew Coffey! tell me a story," the voice said.
"Is it a story you want?" my grandfather said, as bold as could be, for he was tired of being frightened. "Well then, here's one."
And he told the tale of what had befallen him from first to last that night. The tale was long and he was weary. He must have fallen asleep, for when he awoke he lay on a hillside under the open heavens, and his horse grazed at his side.
XIX--CARELESS MR. BUZZARD
Mr. Turkey Buzzard doesn't have any sense. You watch him and you will see that what I have said is true.
When the rain pours down he sits on the fence and hunches up his shoulders and draws in his neck and tries to hide his head. There he sits looking so pitiful that you are real sorry for him.
"Never mind," he says to himself, "when this rain is over I'm going to build a house right off. I'm not going to let the rain pelt me this way again."
But after the clouds were gone, and a fresh breeze blew, and the sun shone, what did Mr. Turkey Buzzard do? He sat on top of a dead pine tree where the sun could warm him, and he stretched out his wings, and he turned round and round so the wind could dry his feathers. Then he laughed to himself and said: "The rain is over. It isn't going to rain any more, there's no use of my building a house now."
Mr. Turkey Buzzard is certainly a very careless man. When it is raining he can't build a house, and when it isn't raining he doesn't need one.
