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Why, instead of drawing a picture of a pail of sour milk, as the teacher had told him to do, he had made a picture of a monkey-doodle sitting on top of a Jack o'Lantern pumpkin. Wasn't that just awful! Well, I guess yes, and some tooth brushes besides. "Oh, Curly, how could you?" asked the owl teacher, in a sorrowful voice. "I I didn't mean to," spoke the little piggie boy.
Lord Erymanth met me, and led me up to his sister, who gave me a cold kiss, and we had a little commonplace talk, during which I could see Viola spring up to Harold, who was standing beside her brother, and the colour rising in his bronzed face at her eager acknowledgments of the flower-pot; after which she applied herself to begging her brother to let his horse and groom go over early the next morning for the Christmas gifts she had left behind, but Dermot did not seem propitious, not liking to trust the man he had with him with the precious Jack o'Lantern over hills slippery with frost; and Viola, as one properly instructed in the precariousness of equine knees, subsided disappointed; while I had leisure to look up at the two gentlemen standing there, and I must say that Harold looked one of Nature's nobles even beside Dermot, and Dermot a fine, manly fellow even beside Harold, though only reaching to his shoulder.
And some of them saw and feared him. After Johnnie Green went to bed Jack sat a long time on a fence post and grinned at the black night. And nobody except Benjamin Bat dared go near him. After a while Jack O'Lantern vanished. His gleaming eyes no longer flashed, his horrid mouth no longer grinned. And nobody cared to go near the place where he had sat, to see what had become of him.
And everybody shuddered at the Muley Cow's next remark. "The pieces tasted very good," she said. "It was as fine pumpkin as I ever ate." The Muley Cow rather enjoyed the talk she caused because she had eaten Jack O'Lantern. And feeling that any one so brave ought not to appear too meek and mild, she sometimes tried to look as fierce as she could.
Yet there came a time when many of her friends claimed that she was very brave indeed. On a crisp fall evening a terrible, grinning fellow known as Jack O'Lantern appeared about the farmhouse. Johnnie Green, at least, did not fear him, in spite of his flaming features. For Johnnie and Jack spent the whole evening together.
"All right," said Flop, "we'll do it." So they tied a string around the pumpkin and lifted it between them, each one carrying his share. And the loaf of bread was put on top, where it would not fall off. Well, the piggie boys had not gone very far, carrying the pumpkin home to make a Jack o'lantern, when, all of a sudden, out from behind a lot of bushes, jumped a big wolf.
"I was the first one out of the barn this morning. And I knocked Jack O'Lantern off the fence post." "What happened then?" Miss Kitty Cat wanted to know, as she stared round-eyed at the Muley Cow. "He broke into a dozen pieces." Miss Kitty Cat was suspicious. "If that's so, where are the pieces?" "I ate them," the Muley Cow explained. And everybody said she was very, very brave.
At dawn Miss Kitty Cat crawled out of the woodpile to do a little early hunting. And she claimed that at that hour Jack O'Lantern still sat on the fence post. She saw the back of his head so she said. And that was enough for her. She did not look at him a second time. And yet when broad daylight came Jack O'Lantern had vanished completely. It was a great mystery.
Whenever the clatter of a wagon sounded from the road, the two rushed out to the gate, to be there when the wagon passed. It was said that strangers seemed to be frightened. Anyhow, shouts were heard. Old dog Spot did a great deal of barking. And Miss Kitty Cat hid under the woodpile. Queer tales travelled like wildfire that night. All the after-dark prowlers knew about Jack O'Lantern.
At last one got up very close, and passed right between Tom and I. I don't think I was ever more scared in my life. My hair stood on end like the quills of the fretful porcupine; I could not imagine what on earth it was. I took it to be some hellish machination of a Yankee trick. I did not know whether to run or stand, until I heard Tom laugh and say, "Well, well, that's a jack o'lantern."
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