"'Gabbing' Dick!" nodded the Tinker.
"Who told me very seriously—"
"That I'd been found in the big holler oak wi' my throat cut," nodded the Tinker.
"But what did he mean by it?"
"Why, y' see," explained the Tinker, leaning over to turn a frizzling bacon-rasher very dexterously with the blade of a jack-knife, "y' see, 'Gabbing' Dick is oncommon fond of murders, hangings, sooicides, and such like—it's just a way he's got."
"A very unpleasant way!" said I.
"But very harmless when all's done and said," added the Tinker.
"You mean?"
"A leetle weak up here," explained the Tinker, tapping his forehead with the handle of the jack-knife. "His father was murdered the day afore he were born, d'ye see, which druv his poor mother out of her mind, which conditions is apt to make a man a leetle strange."
"Poor fellow!" said I, while the Tinker began his tap-tapping again.