"Well, then, as long as you're so indifferent, let me tell you, plump and plain, that the major's dead as Julius Cæsar! The Indians killed him, burnt him and minced him up! Now, that's the solemn truth, and his last words to me were, 'Break the news gently to Maria.' You see the man loved you. He cared more for you than you seemed to do for him. He would have welcomed death if he had known you had ceased to love him."
"What did you say his last words were?"
"Why, just before his soul took its eternal flight he whispered something in my ear. Then I made a sudden dash and escaped from the savages, to bring his message back to you. That message was: 'Break the news gently to Maria.' That's what the major said with his dying lips."
"Well, then, why don't you break the news to Maria?"
"Madam, such levity is untimely. I have broken it—broken it gently.
You have heard it all."
"Do you suppose I am Major Bing's wife?"
"Certainly."
"Well, she moved around into Market street last December. Maybe you'd better hunt her up."
The general looked at Mrs. Wood solemnly for a minute, and then he said he would. Then he bade Mrs. Wood good-morning, bowed himself out and walked around to look for the widow. When the real widow heard the news, she was deeply affected, and she sobbed in a most distressing manner. Subsequently she went into mourning. The life insurance company paid her the money due upon the major's policy. The major's lodge passed resolutions of regret, his family divided up his property, and the community settled down comfortably in the conviction that the major was finally and hopelessly dead.
About a year afterward, however, Major Bing suddenly arrived in town without announcing his coming. He had been held as a prisoner by the Indians, and had escaped. As he stepped from the cars a policeman looked at him a minute, then seized him by the collar and hurried him around to the coroner's office. Before he could recover from his amazement the coroner empaneled a jury, put the action of the insurance company in evidence and promptly got from the jury a verdict that "the said Bing came to his death at the hands of the Indians."