“Looked? When?”
“Just now.”
“Where?”
“Yonder,” said I, pointing; “over
there, where I found him nodding asleep, and thought
it was you.”
He held me by the collar and stared at me so, that
I began to think his first idea about cutting my throat
had revived.
“Dressed like you, you know, only with a hat,”
I explained, trembling; “and — and”
— I was very anxious to put this delicately
- “and with — the same reason for wanting
to borrow a file. Didn’t you hear the
cannon last night?”
“Then, there was firing!” he said to himself.
“I wonder you shouldn’t have been sure
of that,” I returned, “for we heard it
up at home, and that’s further away, and we were
shut in besides.”
“Why, see now!” said he. “When
a man’s alone on these flats, with a light head
and a light stomach, perishing of cold and want, he
hears nothin’ all night, but guns firing, and
voices calling. Hears? He sees the soldiers,
with their red coats lighted up by the torches carried
afore, closing in round him. Hears his number
called, hears himself challenged, hears the rattle
of the muskets, hears the orders ‘Make ready!
Present! Cover him steady, men!’ and
is laid hands on — and there’s nothin’!
Why, if I see one pursuing party last night —
coming up in order, Damn ’em, with their tramp,
tramp — I see a hundred. And as to firing!
Why, I see the mist shake with the cannon, arter
it was broad day — But this man;” he had
said all the rest, as if he had forgotten my being
there; “did you notice anything in him?”
“He had a badly bruised face,” said I,
recalling what I hardly knew I knew.
“Not here?” exclaimed the man, striking
his left cheek mercilessly, with the flat of his hand.
“Yes, there!”
“Where is he?” He crammed what little
food was left, into the breast of his grey jacket.
“Show me the way he went. I’ll pull
him down, like a bloodhound. Curse this iron
on my sore leg! Give us hold of the file, boy.”
I indicated in what direction the mist had shrouded
the other man, and he looked up at it for an instant.
But he was down on the rank wet grass, filing at
his iron like a madman, and not minding me or minding
his own leg, which had an old chafe upon it and was
bloody, but which he handled as roughly as if it had
no more feeling in it than the file. I was very
much afraid of him again, now that he had worked himself
into this fierce hurry, and I was likewise very much
afraid of keeping away from home any longer.
I told him I must go, but he took no notice, so I
thought the best thing I could do was to slip off.
The last I saw of him, his head was bent over his
knee and he was working hard at his fetter, muttering
impatient imprecations at it and at his leg.
The last I heard of him, I stopped in the mist to
listen, and the file was still going.
