"Hoo-hoo-hoo! Hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" he shouted out; and another, long ways
off, answered to him.
What should I say? was the question in my mind while I waited for Mr.
Champernowne. And first I thought I'd say nothing at all; but then I
reckoned 'twould be more solemn and like a miracle if I did. I minded a
thing my father used to speak when I was a li'l one. He'd tell it out very
serious, and being poetry made it still more so. "Don't you do it, else
you'll rue it!" That's what my father used to tell me a score of times a
day, when I was a boy, and the words somehow came in my mind that night.
Therefore I resolved to speak 'em and make 'em sound so mysterious as I
could, just when the young fellow found the canister.
It all went very well--in fact, a lot better than I'd hoped for, chance
favoured me in a very peculiar way, and the Dowl hisself couldn't have
planned a greater or more startling surprise for Cranston Champernowne.
Along he came presently, with his head down and his shoulders up. Like a
haunted creature he crept from the woods; his face was white, and misery
stared out of it. Presently he looked upward at the moon, while he walked
along like an old, tired man. And when I see his face, I was terrible glad
I'd took such a lot of trouble for him, because 'twas properly ravaged
with suffering. He came to the canister, and the owl was hollering for all
he was worth, and the matter fell out like this.
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