“Yes, he's just as spry and pert as anybody. He seems to have recovered entirely from all his wounds; none of 'em have disfiggered him any, and his nerves have got over their terrible strain.”
Tim ran promptly through all the notes in his diapason, and the rest joined in on the middle register.
“Well, I'm not at all surprised,” said Mr. Oldunker, a bitter States' Rights Democrat, and the oracle of his party. “I told you how it'd be from the first. Harry Glen was one of them Wide-Awakes that marched around on pleasant evenings last Fall with oil-cloth capes and kerosene lamps. I told you that those fellows'd be no where when the war they were trying to bring on came. I'm not at all astonished that he showed himself lily-livered when he found the people that he was willing to rob of their property standing ready to fight for their homes and their slaves.”
“Ready to shoot into a crowd of unsuspecting men, you mean,” sneered Basil Wurmset, “and then break their own cursed necks when they saw a little cold steel coming their way.”
Tim came in promptly with his risible symphony.
“Well, they didn't run away from any cold steel that Harry Glen displayed,” sneered Oldunker.
Tim's laugh was allegro and crescendo at the first, and staccato at the close.
“You seem to forget that Capt. Bob Bennett was a Wide-Awake, too,” retorted Wurmset, “though you might have remembered it from his having threatened to lick you for encouraging the boys to stone the lamps in the procession.”
Tim cackled, gurgled and roared.
Nels Hathaway had kept silent as long as he could. He must put his oar into the conversational tide.