"No! Do they?"
"Invariably. I've known many colossal liars, and they were all as bald as apples."
The Colonel was getting nervous, and was so slow that even Gordon (who could sit and stare at the board a full half hour without moving) began to be impatient.
"Come! Colonel, marshal your forces a little more promptly. If you're going at me echelon, sound y'r bugle; I'm ready."
"Don't worry," answered the Colonel, in his calmest nasal, "I'll accommodate you with all the fight you want."
"Did it ever occur to you," began the Judge again, addressing the crowd generally, as he moved back to the stove and lit another cigar, "did it ever occur to you that it is a little singular a man should get bald on the top of his head first? Curious fact. So accustomed to it we no longer wonder at it. Now see the Colonel there. Quite a growth of hair on his clap-boarding, as it were, but devilish thin on his roof."
Here the Colonel looked up and tried to say something, but the Judge went on imperturbably.
"Now I take it that it's strictly providential that a man gets bald on top of his head first, because if he must get bald it is best to get bald where it can be covered up."
"By jinks, that's a fact!" said the rest in high admiration of the Judge's ratiocination. Steve was specially pleased, and drawing a neck-yoke from a barrel standing near, pounded the floor vigorously.
"Talking about being bald," put in Foster, "reminds me of a scheme of mine, which is to send no one out to fight Indians but bald men. Think how powerless they'd—"