Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/342

330 —account of their clothes. No need for a man to dress himself up like a performing monkey. Cursed nonsense.

"Morgan had stopped for breakfast at Harris's—a big house—big farm. Harris had always talked as if he could eat a rebel a day and still thirst for blood, but when I got into the dining-room, Harris was waiting on the table himself, as willing as a nigger. I recognized Morgan—I 'd seen him at the hotel—and I just stood there glaring at him, while they explained who I was. I could hear Harris cracking his finger-joints behind him, with nervousness, while he listened. And when Morgan looked at me, I looked at him under my eyebrows, with my head down, and I said: 'Morgan, I helped your brother—'"

"Oh, dear!" his daughter interrupted. "You have n't told the lieutenant about that."

"Well," he interpolated briefly, "Charlton Morgan had been sent up to Camp Chase on my train with a carload of other prisoners about a year or so before, and he recognized me going through the car with my lantern, and I promised to get word to his family that he was n't killed, and go out to Camp Chase to see him—and took him tobacco. And when he was exchanged, I lent him money and took a signet ring from him. 'And darn your eyes,' I said to Morgan, 'this 's the thanks I get. If you want to fight, why don't you stay where there are soldiers to fight with? Coming around here burning private property—assaulting private citizens. You ought to be ashamed of