Each day the temptation to shoot them in the legs
became more luring, and every day I felt my fate calling to me
imperiously. Visions of the gallows rose up before me, and with the
hemp about my neck I saw stretched out the pitiless future of my
children, dark with disgrace and shame. I became afraid of myself,
and Bess went about with anxious face, privily beseeching my friends
to entice me into taking a vacation. Then, and at the last gasp,
came the thought that saved me: WHY NOT CONFISCATE? If their forays
were bootless, in the nature of things their forays would cease.
The first to enter my field thereafter was a man.
I was waiting for him And, oh joy! it was the "Repeater" himself,
smugly complacent with knowledge of past success. I dropped the
rifle negligently across the hollow of my arm and went down to him.
"I am sorry to trouble you for those poppies," I said in my oiliest
tones; "but really, you know, I must have them."
He regarded me speechlessly. It must have made a great picture.
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