Le Premier Pas
had taken my horse also waited at table; for he and his wife were the only servants, and they slept in a separate building. You may depend I ascertained this before we had finished dinner. Indeed I was by way of asking too many questions (the most oblique and delicate was that which elicited my host's name, Ewbank), nor was I careful enough to conceal their drift.
"'Do you know,' said this fellow Ewbank, who was one of the downright sort, 'if it wasn't you, I should say you were in a funk of robbers? Have you lost your nerve?'
"'I hope not,' said I, turning jolly hot, I can tell you; 'but—well, it's not a pleasant thing to have to put a bullet through a fellow!'
"'No?' said he, coolly. 'I should enjoy nothing better, myself; besides, yours didn't go through.'
"'I wish it had!' I was smart enough to cry.
"'Amen!' said he.
"And I emptied my glass; actually I did not know whether my wounded bank-robber was in prison, dead, or at large!
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