“You wish to go to an inn?”
“For Heaven’s sake, yes. These four days I have tasted nothing but a bit of tobacco.”
“Can you spare a bit of that?”
“All I have.”
I handed him my cigar-case, and the roll of dulcissimus. He snatched the latter from me, and bit into it with the furious eagerness of a wolf.
“Ah! the right sort this!” muttered he to himself. “Ah, young man, or old man—you’re an old man, ain’t you? How old are you?”
“Two-and-twenty.”
He shook his head doubtingly.
“Can hardly believe that. But four days in the prairie, and nothin’ to eat. Well, it may be so. But, stranger, if I had had this bit of tobacco only ten days ago——A bit of tobacco is worth a deal sometimes. It might have saved a man’s life!”
Again he groaned, and his accents were wild and unnatural.