Queer Stories for Boys and Girls | Page 3

open, you
may go in and find the Sleepy-headed People, the Invisible People, and
all the rest, ke-whack!"
"Ke-whack!" said Bob, mimicking, and grinning till he showed his row
of white milk-teeth. But the gentleman stake-driver must have been
offended, for he walked away into the water and disappeared among
the willows, saying, "Ke-whack! ke-whack!" in an indignant way at
every step.
When once the stake-driver fairy had gone, Bob was troubled. He was
lonesome. He had always been lonesome, because the family was so
large. There is never any company for a body where there are so many.
Now Bob wished that "Ole Ke-whack," as he called him, had not
walked off into the willows in such a huff. He would like to see who
lived under the ground, you know. After a while, he thought he would
go and look for the door under the cliff. Bobby called it "clift," after the
manner of the people on the Indian Kaintuck.
Once under the cliff, he was a long time searching around for a door.
At last he found a something that looked like a door in the rock. He
looked to see if there was a latch-string, for the houses in the Indian
Kaintuck are opened with latch-strings. But he could not find one. Then

he said to himself (for Bobby, being a lonesome boy, talked to himself
a great deal) words like these:
"Ole Ke-whack thed he knowed wharabout the key mout be. The time I
went down to Madison, to market with mammy, I theed a feller dretht
up to kill come along and open hith door with a iron thing. That mout
be a key. Wonder ef I can't find it mythelf! There, I come acrost the
hole what it goeth into."
He had no trouble in "coming acrost" the key itself, for he found it
lying on the ground. He took it up, looked at it curiously, and said:
"Thith thing muth be a key." So he tried to put it into the key-hole, but
an unexpected difficulty met him. Every time he tried to put in the key,
the key-hole, which before was in easy reach, ran up so far that he
could not get to it. He picked up some loose stones and piled them up
against the door, and stood on them on his tiptoes, but still the key-hole
shot up out of his reach. At last he got down exhausted, and sat down
on the pile of stones he had made, with his back to the door. On
looking round, he saw that the key-hole was back in its old place, and
within a few inches of his head. He turned round suddenly and made a
dive at it, with the key held in both hands, but the key-hole shot up like
a rocket, until it was just out of his reach.
After trying to trap this key-hole in every way he could, he sat down on
a stone and looked at it a minute, and then said very slowly: "Well, I
never! That beats me all holler! What a funny thing a key-hole muth
be."
At last he noticed another key-hole in the rock, not far away, and
concluded to try the key in that. The key went in without trouble, and
Bob turned it round several times, until the iron key had turned to brass
in his hands.
"The blamed thing ith turnin' yaller!" cried little Towpate. You must
excuse Bob's language. You might have talked in the same way if you
had been so lucky as to be born on the Indian Kaintuck.
Seeing that he could not open anything by turning the key round in this

key-hole, since there was no door here, he thought he would now try
what luck he might have with the "yaller" key in opening the door. The
key-hole might admit a brass key. But what was his amazement to find
on trying, that the key-hole which had run upward from an iron key,
now ran down toward the bottom of the door. He pulled away the
stones and stooped down till his head was near the ground, but the
key-hole disappeared off the bottom of the door. When he gave up the
chase it returned as before. Bobby worked himself into a great heat
trying to catch it, but it was of no use.
Then he sat down again and stared at the door, and again he said slowly:
"Well, I never, in all my born'd days! That beats me all holler! What a
thing a keyhole ith! But that feller in town didn't have no trouble."
After thinking a while he looked at the key, and came to the conclusion
that, as the key-hole went up from an iron key, and