‘Mister, look a-here; aint you—aint you——?’
‘Fel-spar,’ said Shaw, cabalistically.
‘Oh dear me! that’s enough! My dear feller, we’ve got a duty to perform. I guess we know where you come from. Mister, aint you——?’
‘Are you addressing me?’ said Professor Shaw, mildly, looking up. ‘Are you addressing your remarks to me, my friend?
‘Wonderful cunnin’, but it wont do. ’Twont sarve you; I’m a-feard we shall have to——’
‘Well, Sir, my name is Shaw.’
‘What’s that you got onto your cane? What you doin’ in Queens cëounty? Do tell, aint you——got loose from somewhar? Honor bright!’
The professor, lost in amazement, answered only by a broad stare. He then bethought him that two lunatics had escaped from yonder mansion. The idea satisfied his mind, and surprise gave way at once to a smile, full of benevolence and pity. ‘My poor friends,’ said he, ‘do go back; you have surely wandered from home; do go up the hill—do go up the hill.’ Then stamping his foot with an air of authority, he exclaimed, stretching out the hammer of his cane, ‘Go back to the asylum, in-stan-taneously!’
‘I guess the one in the loft will be long enough,’ whispered the rustic; ‘but fetch the longest of the two ropes, and make haste. Oh, he’s stark!’
‘Ah! how sad!’ soliloquized Professor Shaw, as both of his new friends retreated, and one hurried out of sight, ‘how sad a spectacle! the deluded, wandering mind, told by such unerring symptoms; the wild eye, strange words, and fantastic pleasantness; reason hurled from her own throne, and that steady light exchanged for the fitful flickering over decay! They mistake me for one of their melancholy fraternity, poor lunatics! whereas my lamp of life, and reason, it appears to me, never shone brighter. I shall yet work out something of which my country will be proud, and which shall inscribe on an enduring pedestal the name of Shaw.’ The professor (with his hammer) split a rock. ‘If those men come back, what had I better do with them? I will contemplate the remarkable phenomenon of the mind in ruins. Humanity suggests to me that I ought to coax them back with sophistry as far as the garden-gate, and then holler for help.’ Shaw was the best hearted of men; he would not hurt a human being in the world, cruel as he was to bugs, and to centipedes an ‘outer barbarian.’ In the course of ten minutes he was at the base of a large rock, scooping out garnets, and thinking casually of that ‘great work which his country would not willingly let die,’ when a rope was let over his head and shoulders from above, and the professor was noosed. The countrymen jumped down, and began to drag him from the other end, squeezing his bowels, and winding him round and round, till coming to close quarters, they knocked his hat off, wrested his hammer out of his hand, and seizing him by the collar, almost throttled him with the knuckles of their immense fists.