“Come back with me,” said he, “and I’ll tell ye all about it; I’ll tell ye all about it, stranger.”
“About what?”
“The explosion,—the explosion of the laboratory thar!”
Dragging me towards Brown’s Island with one hand, and gesticulating violently with the other, he proceeded to jabber incoherently about that dire event.
“Wait, wait,” said he, “till I tell you!”—like the Ancient Mariner with skinny hand holding his unwilling auditor. “My daughter was work’n’ thar at the time; and she was blowed all to pieces! all to pieces! My God, my God, it was horrible! Come to my house, and you shall see her; if you don’t believe me, you shall see her! Blowed all to pieces, all to pieces, my God!”
His house was close by, and the daughter, who was “blowed all to pieces,” was to be seen standing miraculously at the door, in a remarkable state of preservation, considering the circumstances. She seemed to be looking anxiously at the old man and the stranger he was bringing home with him. She came to the wicket to meet us; and then I saw that her hands and face were covered with cruel scars.
“Look!” said he, clutching her with one hand, while he still held me with the other. “All to pieces, as I told you!”
“Don’t, don’t, pa!” said the girl, coaxingly. “You mustn’t mind him,” she whispered to me. “He is a little out of his head. Oh, pa! don’t act so!”
“He has been telling me how you were blown up in the laboratory. You must have suffered fearfully from those Wounds!”
“Oh, yes; there was five weeks nobody thought I would live. But I didn’t mind it,” she added with a smile, “for it was in a good cause.”