Half-interested, and more to please the child than for any other reason, Ira glanced at the bullets. Then, suddenly, he took them in his own hand and examined them closely.
What interested him about them was that they were not alike.
“These outer the deer, Terry?” he asked.
“Yop, ’n’ don’t you put ’em in yer mouth nuther,” said Terry, addressing the child instead of Ira. “Them’s poison, them is.”
“I tell yer what I’ll do,” said Ira, fumbling in his pockets. “You give me them bullets and I’ll give you ten cents an’ yer can buy ice cream and lolly-pops and them ain’t poison, are they, Terry?”
Terry was too engrossed to review this proposition, but the child complied with alacrity.
“Now me an’ you is made a bargain,” said Ira. “An’ if I get hungry I can chew up the bullets ’cause poison don’t hurt me. Once down in South Americy when I deserted from a ship I et poison toads when I was hidin’ from cannibals; you ask Auntie Miry if that ain’t so. Ain’t that so, Terry?”
“Reckon it must be,” said Terry, preoccupied.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE MARKED ARTICLE
Here then was one undoubted fact; the deer had been shot by two different guns. Ira cogitated upon this fact and tried to make up his mind what he would do next, or whether he would do anything. And probably he would not have done anything if it had not been for the newspaper which he delivered to Aunt Mira. She did not give him this to read for she still maintained a demeanor of coldness toward this arch-seducer. But he found the paper on the sitting room table and read the marked article.