"I don't know whether you have or not."
"What I tell you is true, Amos," and the listener was thoroughly surprised by the change in the bearing of Master Piemont's apprentice.
"What do you want of me?" he asked, sharply.
"I don't know," Hardy replied, in a tone of despair. "It seems as if everybody was my enemy. I went down to Jim Gray's house this afternoon, and he wouldn't so much as look at me."
"Do you think he has good reason to be friendly with you?"
"You say that because his brother was killed at the Custom House. Amos, I didn't think anything like murder could happen when I told the crowd the soldier on the steps was the one who had knocked me down. If you had been treated as I was, and saw the man standing there when you believed the soldiers were going to rise against us, you might have done the same thing."
"Well, and if I might, what then, Hardy Baker? What do you want of me?"
"I want you to talk with me, Amos. It seems as if everybody believed I was as much of a murderer as the 'bloody backs,' and Master Piemont told me this afternoon never to show my face near his shop again—that I wasn't wholesome even for Britishers to look at."
"I don't think, Hardy," and now Amos's tone was less sharp than before, "that you should expect either the people or the soldiers would be very friendly toward you."
"But I didn't do this thing. I didn't have any more hand in it than you, or Jim Gray, or Chris Snyder."