what.  The rats could a got the candles, and I reckon they did; I wonder they don't walk off with the whole place, the way you're always going to stop their holes and don't do it; and if they warn't fools they'd sleep in your hair, Silas--_you'd_ never find it out; but you can't lay the _spoon_ on the rats, and that I know.” “Well, Sally, I'm in fault, and I acknowledge it; I've been remiss; but I won't let to-morrow go by without stopping up them holes.” “Oh, I wouldn't hurry; next year 'll do.  Matilda Angelina Araminta _Phelps!_” Whack comes the thimble, and the child snatches her claws out of the sugar-bowl without fooling around any.  Just then the nigger woman steps on to the passage, and says: “Missus, dey's a sheet gone.” “A _sheet_ gone!  Well, for the land's sake!” “I'll stop up them holes to-day,” says Uncle Silas, looking sorrowful. “Oh, _do_ shet up!--s'pose the rats took the _sheet_?  _where's_ it gone, Lize?” “Clah to goodness I hain't no notion, Miss' Sally.  She wuz on de clo'sline yistiddy, but she done gone:  she ain' dah no mo' now.” “I reckon the world _is_ coming to an end.  I _never_ see the beat of it in all my born days.  A shirt, and a sheet, and a spoon, and six can--” “Missus,” comes a young yaller wench, “dey's a brass cannelstick miss'n.” “Cler out from here, you hussy, er I'll take a skillet to ye!” Well, she was just a-biling.  I begun to lay for a chance; I reckoned I would sneak out and go for the woods till the weather moderated.  She kept a-raging right along, running her insurrection all by herself, and everybody else mighty meek and quiet; and at last Uncle Silas, looking kind of foolish, fishes up that spoon out of his pocket.  She stopped, with her mouth open and her hands up; and as for me, I wished I was in Jeruslem or somewheres. But not long, because she says: “It's _just_ as I expected.  So you had it in your pocket all the time; and like as not you've got the other things there, too.  How'd it get there?”