How am I ever to get on with my
narrative, if you keep interrupting me in this style? Be quiet."
"Word of command. Quiet. Quiet it is. Continue."
"No, I said, of course they expect some reward,--that's it."
"What an ass you must be!" broke in Whittlesly.
"Hadn't you sense enough to see they could keep the whole of it, and
nobody the wiser? and of course they couldn't have supposed any one was
coming after it,--could they?
"How am I to know what they thought? If you don't stop your comments,
I'll stop the story; take your choice."
"All right: go ahead."
"While I was considering the case, in came the master of the mansion,--a
thin, stooped, tired-looking little fellow,--'Sam,' he told us, was his
name; then proceeded to narrate how he had found the body, and knew the
uniform, and was kind and tender with it because of its dress, 'for you
see, sah, we darkies is all Union folks'; how he had brought it up in
the night, for fear of his Secesh master, and made a coffin for it, and
buried it decently. After that he took us out to a little spot of fresh
earth, covered with leaves and twigs, and, digging down, we came to a
rough pine box made as well as the poor fellow knew how to put it
together. Opening it, we found all that was left of poor Hunt,
respectably clad in a coarse, clean white garment which Sam's wife had
made as nicely as she could out of her one pair of sheets.
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