The Landlord's Error

I had driven to Comptons Forks a couple of days after the Fourth of July for a few days' tront fishing. There waa no one about the tavcrn as I alighted escept a tall, rawboned, barefooted native, who sat on the stoop smoking a pipe. "Was ye 'spectin tosco the lan'lord?" he asked. "I certainly was, " I replied. "I'm afeered that ye won't see him, 'less ye hang roun here mebbe ez much as a week, ' ' said the native. "ís he away?" I asked. "No. He'stohome." "Little outof sprts, eh?" "I think ye mowt go ez fur ez to say that he was a leetle out of sorts, yes. Ye mowt go a leetle furder yit an say he was consid'able out of sorts. " "What's the matter w-ith him anyhow?" "Wasn't nowhere roun Iiarrups Crossin on the Fourth, was ye?" "No." "Ye missed a heap, cap. Freedom never shrieked like that afore an never will ag'in, not in this deestric'. Our lan'lord was there. He went down the' night afore, so's to be in at the startin bright an early in the mornin. He had a cheerin time 'fore he went to bed at the Crossin tavern, an he bein an ole time friend o' the lan'lord down there, they give him the spare bedroom offen the settin room. He got ready fer bed, an then he see a couple of nice big candles on the mantel tree. " 'Them's the consarndest biggest candles I ever see,' he says. 'Tha's enough taller in 'em to burn from now to nex' Fourth o' July, seems to me, ' he says. 'Now, if Jim'd be'n visitin me up to the Forks an I'd had big taller candles like them in the house, I'd 'a' give Jim one to go to bed with 'stid of a durn sputterin homemade dip like this un. Durned if I don't light both of them spare room candles, jist 'cause Jim's so plaguey mean, ' he says. "An he lit 'em. He were watehin of 'em an wonderin why they didn't give no more light when they begun to spit. They spit blue balls an green balls an yaller balls, an ez they spit they danced an hopped aroun, plinkin the lan'lord some'rs at ev'ryspit. By tho time folks got to the spare room the spittin was over, but the lan'lord was dancin roun, 'mongst the smoke hollerin flre an murder an spooks. The dod durn idjit had gone an lit two big roamin candles that the Crossin lah'lord's oíd woman had stuck on her mantel tree to kinder set it out ja'nty like, an they had spit balls of fire all over him. They had to f etch him home on a feather bed, an, say, you never see hemlock peeled pootier than he was. So if ye hang roun here for a week" - . . .