“A bit of tree timber, I take it,” answers one.
“Looks like a chunk carved out of a cypress knee,” adds a second.
“It ought,” assents Sime, “since that’s jest what it air; an’ this child air he who curved it out. Ye kin see thar’s a hole in the skin-front; which any greenhorn may tell’s been made by a bullet: an’ he’d be still greener in the horn as kedn’t obsarve a tinge o’ red roun’ thet hole, the which air nothin’ more nor less than blood. Now, boys! the bullet’s yit inside the wud, for me an’ Heywood here tuk care not to extract it till the proper time shed come.”
“It’s come now; let’s hev it out!” exclaims Heywood; the others endorsing the demand.
“Thet ye shall. Now, fellurs; take partikler notice o’ what sort o’ egg hez been hatchin’ in this nest o’ cypress knee.”
While speaking, Sime draws his large-bladed knife from its sheath; and, resting the piece of wood on the porch bench, splits it open. When cleft, it discloses a thing of rounded form and metallic lustre, dull leaden—a gun-bullet, as all expected.
There is not any blood upon it, this having been brushed off in its passage through the fibrous texture of the wood. But it still preserves its spherical shape, perfect as when it issued from the barrel of the gun that discharged, or the mould that made it.
Soon as seeing it they all cry out, “A bullet!” several adding, “The ball of a smooth-bore.”
Then one asks, suggestingly:
“Who is there in this neighbourhood that’s got a shooting-iron of such sort?”