“We don’t know what has become of him. Old man Baker was in Dan’s house a good part of the night, Pincksney says; and the houses join, you know; and the last seen of Marmor, he was jumping the fence into Dan’s back yard. Dan’s folks are there this morning, but don’t seem to want to see nor speak to anybody. There’s a mystery about it somehow.”
“Dan is a kind of a queer dark man, you know. Jews mostly is,” said Tim Grassy.
“Dan is a likely sort of fellow,” said Mr. Roome, “I wish he didn’t sell so much whiskey.”
“Between twelve and one o’clock,” resumed the host, “I heard Col. Baker (at least I took it to be his voice). Some of them just opposite here had said the house was afire, and I heard him sing out to the crowd, ‘Put that fire out! nothing like that shall go on; I don’t want any burning.’ Soon after that I heard firing again, and I heard somebody else holler. I don’t know who it was, but I suppose it was Moses Parker.”
“Who shot him?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Where was Watta killed? Poor fellow! I knowed he’d be killed, if anybody was.”
“Down at the ‘dead-ring,’” said Harris, who then gave the account the reader has had, and continued, “When I stepped into my house I stepped right onto some of my wife’s clothes. They had taken ’em all out of the bureau, and flung ’em all over the floor, broke open three large trunks I had, and taken away every rag of clothing I had, and my wife’s bran new dress that she had made very fancy to be baptized in next month—had never had it on—they taken that away, and her watch and chain, and all her jewelry, and all my clothes; and taken a pin of mine that didn’t cost me but sixty-five dollars; and I don’t suppose some of them fellers ever had sixty-five dollars in their lives; and I told Pick. Baker so this morning. Just so; and he said it was some of the factory crowd from the city, none o’ his men hadn’t done it. I said I don’t know; I seen some of his men looked pretty bad too, and I thought they’d take things just as quick as anybody.
“He says, ‘Well, there’s bad men in all crowds.’ Everything in my house is broken up. They carried off all my lamps and such things, tore down my curtains, broke my dishes, and carried off what they couldn’t break—all the victuals and everything. When I told Gaston so this morning, he offered me twenty-five cents to get me something to eat, and I told him I thanked him. They just walked right over my wife’s clothes, and spit on ’em.”
“Harris, what do you suppose they did all this for?”