“If inches won battles, then the British would never lose one,” stated the Porcupine, calmly. “Their beef-eaters are each as big as two men.” With a comical gesture he hitched his belt about and brought the huge pistol which he still carried into plain view. “The little fellow can shoot as straight as the big one,” he added; “and, sometimes, better.”
“Ah,” said Tobias Hawkins, and he stared with interest at the weapon, which he now apparently noted for the first time. “I see.” There was a pause during which he examined the dwarf with amused unbelief; then he inquired: “And where, may I be permitted to ask, has the excellence of your aim been called into play?”
“At Lexington,” replied the Porcupine, with never a wrinkle of his countenance; “also at Bunker Hill; and again in some less important affairs about the town of Boston.”
There was something about the simplicity of this answer that drove the smiles from the faces turned toward the speaker. The unbelieving amusement in the face of Hawkins, however, remained.
“I see,” said he, “that you are a person who has seen service. Mayhap, you were also a partaker in the matter at Trenton, a few weeks ago.”
“I had no such good luck,” replied the Porcupine, moodily. “By all right I should have been there; but some folks need a great deal of scurrying to keep them at rest, and so I must be riding here and there for them, delivering letters filled with nothing when I might have been of some real service beyond the river.”
There was no laughter or grinning at this; even Hawkins seemed to have concluded that he had exhausted the dwarf’s humorous possibilities, for he yawned and said:
“Ah, well, you take yourself seriously enough, I’ll say that for you, my lad. But, then, it is as well that you do so, for you’ll find as you progress through life that others will not go far out of their way to do the like.” And with this the man turned away, calling to the host: “Landlord, have not my friends arrived?”
“No, Mr. Hawkins, not yet, sir. It is a trifle early, I think. You said eight o’clock, and it is not much after seven.”
Hawkins looked at a huge silver watch and replaced it in his pocket with a frown. Ben noticed this with a smile.