“I have every reason to believe it is their purpose to shoot me at daybreak to-morrow.”
“Shoot?—Hell!” He stared at me as if he had just heard his own death sentence pronounced, and his little peaked face looked ghastly in the dim light. “Shoot ye? Good Lord, Cap, whut fer? Ye ain't done nothin' as I knows on, 'cept ter scrap a bit with thet blasted Yank, an' sure thet's no shootin' matter, er else I'd a bin a goner long ago.”
“That 'Yank' has seen fit to charge me with being a spy; and as I was foolish enough to insult General Sheridan last night, my fate is probably sealed.”
This somewhat complex statement seemed to be too much for Jed to grasp promptly.
“Gosh, ye don't say!” he muttered. “Then, durn it, I'm in luck, fer all they've got agin me is pot-shootin' at a nigger soger up in ther mountings; en thet ain't much, 'cause I didn't hit ther durned cuss. Blame sorry tew, fer 'Who spills the foremost foeman's life, his party conquers in the strife.' Thet's Scott agin, Cap. Dew ye ever read Sir Walter? I tell ye, he's a poet, suah.”
Without pausing for a reply, or even noting that none had been given, Jed was carefully covering every inch of exposed wall with his little shrewd, glinting eyes.
“Ain't much show ter work out o' yere, is thar, Cap?” he asked at last reflectively; “leastwise I don't see none, 'less them thar dark corners hes got holes in 'em.”
“The wall is entirely solid.”
“So I sorter reckoned. But if ye'll crawl through yere inter my boodour, thar's a place whar I reckon ther tew of us tergether mought make a try fer it. It's too durn high up fer me ter git at alone.”
I rose to my feet slowly, wondering at the strange lassitude which made me so indifferent to that life I had always before so highly valued. Bungay noticed my hopelessness.