"I am afraid you are not a success as a hero."
"Vell, I dudder peen a success as a coward und kept avay from dot pullet."
In the meantime Ephraim had recovered from the shock sufficiently to detect the powerful odor of the stale egg that had struck him.
"Great gum!" he gurgled. "What was that Dutchman's pistol loaded with? Something must have crawled inter ther pesky thing an' died there!"
"Do you really smell anything?" chuckled Sammy Smiles.
"Do I?" howled the Yankee boy, sitting up and gasping for breath. "I ruther think I do, by gum!"
"You must be mistaken. Being seriously wounded, you imagine it. It is the result of your injury."
"Is that so? Wal," he wildly panted, "if that's ther case, I hope I'll die soon an' git aout of my misery!"
The spectators were convulsed with merriment, and Ephraim began to smell a rat—if, indeed, it were possible to smell anything but the ancient eggs.
"Say!" he snorted, "you fellers don't act like there was anybody dyin' around here. An' by chaowder! this smell is jest ther same ez I struck when I crawled under dad's old barn to find where the speckled hen was layin', an' crunched up some aigs that hed bin there two or three months. Ef that Dutchman loaded his pistol with a ripe aig an' shot me in the neck, I'll paound the stuffin' aout of him, by gum!"