"They'll kill me when they know!"
"So you took precautions first?"
"Why do you torture me?"
"Prefer a meat-ball?"
"Go on, sir."
"I might be induced to hide away these delicacies. Also this"—I kicked the dog's carcass—"in fact to help you some. You could bury the past, and resign yo' post as cook."
"The news will come out, and I'll be murdered anyway. What's the good?"
"There being no ransom," says I, "the use for you here ain't much conspicuous. As a cook you're precarious, too. Suppose I get you turned loose?"
"I'll pay one hundred thousand dollars the day you set me free in the nearest town."
How could I tell the poor brute that he had not a dollar left in the whole world?