Cries of amazement and incredulity rose on all sides. "You're crazy, Blant,—wouldn't you defend your life?" "Wouldn't you shoot for your freedom?" "Wouldn't you fight for your land if the Cheevers tuck it again?" To all of which he returned the solemn answer, "No,—none of them things would now tempt me! The bullet that pierced my friend's heart was my last! Not for life, not for freedom, not for old ancestral land, will I shed another drap of human blood!"
Nucky heard these words of Blant's as if stunned and smitten, and walked home beside me in a daze.
XXVI
"MARVLES" AND MARVELS
Thursday.
Yesterday, when the ground was hard and smooth, but not too dry, marbles struck the school like a lightning express. It appears that before school in the morning Geordie had "trusted" a few leading spirits (Taulbee and Philip among the cottage boys, Lige Munn and Harl Drake among the day-pupils) with sets of marbles, giving them three days' time in which to pay him the ten cents a set. At noon playtime I was surrounded by a mob of my boys, loudly demanding extra work, while the woodwork teacher was beseiged by day-pupils of all sizes and ages, demanding extra jobs in the shop.
When Hen told me before supper that all the "day-schools" as well as the cottage boys were buying "marvles" from Geordie, I said, "Oh, you must be mistaken. Geordie has not more than the dozen sets he traded you boys out of after Christmas, and possibly a few others collected before."
Hen looked wise. "You never knowed he had a marvle-mill a-running back yander in the branch, ever sence he got the stable-job?" he said.
"What in the world?" I demanded.
"Right there under the stable-lot fence, where the branch falls into Perilous, he took'n made him four little troughs, that takes streams out and draps 'em into four holes he's got hollered out in a flat rock underneath. All he's got to do is to put a chunk of sandstone in every hole, and the water keeps it a-whirling till first thing it knows it's a pure marvle; and then he puts in another chunk. He makes him twelve marvles a day thataway—it haint no trouble to drap in the chunks whilst he's watering the nags—and he's been at it stiddy for six weeks. I kotch him at it one time, and he give me a set not to tell t'other boys. Marvles! Gee-oh, he's got 'em!"