“That last would prove a rather ditter tough bargain for him and his masters, I reckon,” responded the hunter, dryly.
“Yes, that is all nonsense, no doubt,” observed Piper. “But still it is a mystery to my mind, how money, that a short time ago was so scarce, should now all at once be so plenty; and that was the reason I raised the question before you, who generally know pretty near what is going on among our head men, and who, I thought likely, could easily explain this secret.”
“No,” said the other; “no, Bill; there might be der trouble about that. When a state secret falls into my ears, it is not so easy to get it out of my mouth. I've got an impediment in my ditter speech, you know,” he added, with a slight twinkle of the eye.
“Your mouth goes off well enough on some public matters, I find,” remarked Piper, with an air fluctuating between a miff and a laugh.
“Der yes, to say, for instance, that the decree to confiscate and sell the tory estates was a ditter righteous one—has worked like a charm—called out the rusty dollars from their hiding-places thick as der bumblebees in June—ditter drove off the blue devils from among the people, and raised a regiment of men in less than three weeks!”
“Ah! and a fine regiment, too, it will be. I long to see it all wrought together, for I don't know a tenth of them—men or officers—not even our colonel.”
“Herrick? Well, I can't der quite say I should know him now; but he is a ditter go-ahead fellow, who loves the smell of gunpowder nearly as well as Seth Warner himself, whose pupil he is in the trade. We shall have the pleasure of seeing him in a few minutes, probably, as Coffin told me he passed along here night before last, on the way to Number Four, to come on with Stark. That may be told without ditter mischief.”
“And so may another thing, perhaps, which I should like to know, Dunning.”
“Der what is that, Bill?”
“Why, you know that Bart, the night after we discovered the place where we supposed the girl was destroyed, disappeared, and has not been here since. Where have they sent him, and what after?”