"Are men starving here around us?" I asked, trying to realize what I had heard.
"Ay, and dying of it. The sun yonder no longer signals breakfast for Boston. Better finish your fish while you may."
He pulled slowly at his pipe. "If I am right," he drawled, "it would be close to mid-day now in England—the King's dinner-hour. His Majesty should be greasing his chin with hot goose-gravy."
His blue eyes began to shine; the long pipe-stem snapped short between forefinger and thumb; the smoking bowl dropped, and he set his moccasined heel upon it, grinding clay and fire into the stone floor. I watched him for a moment, and then resumed my writing.
"God save the King," he sneered, "and smear his maw thick with good fat meat! Let the rebel babes o' Boston die snivelling at their rebel mothers' dried-up breasts! It's a merry life, Cardigan. I dreamed last night a naked skeleton rode through Boston streets a-beating a jolly ringadoon on his bones:
"'Yankee doodle came to town
A-riding on a pony—'
But the pony was all bones, too, like the Pale Horse, and sat Death astride, beating ever the same mad march:
"'Yankee doodle—doodle—do!
Yankee doodle—dandy!'