“Dad,” said this graceless son of a graceless sire.
“Go and wash yer face, Tom. Ye’re blacker than Black Jack.”
“Dad, there’s another man up the chimley. We come near havin’ a fight up there. I told him what I would do; and he got skeered, and went up top.”
“What d’yer mean, Tom?” demanded the patriarch.
Tom stated again, more explicitly than before, the subject matter of his startling communication.
“I reckon he’s a Yank, dad; he talks like one, but says he b’longs to the Forty-fust Virginny. I know he’s a Yank. I kin smell one a mile off.”
Somers was flattered; but he was not angry at the compliment, and calmly waited for an invitation to join the family below.
“He’s the feller that gin the soldiers the slip,” added the father. “The sergeant says he’s a Yank; but t’other prisoner says he’s a James River pilot.”
“I know he’s a Yank. He’d ‘a’ killed me if I hadn’t skeered him off.”
“I reckon he skeered you more’n you skeered him,” added the head of the family, who appeared not to have a very high opinion of his son’s courage. “We’ll smoke him out, Tom. Go’n git some pitch-wood and sich truck.”