again"--and he laid the glass
down. "Did you think you could win always?"
"Oh, no," said Wilson, with a sigh, "I didn't expect that, but I can't
believe Luigi killed your uncle, and I feel very sorry for him. It makes
me blue. And you would feel as I do, Tom, if you were not prejudiced
against those young fellows."
"I don't know about that," and Tom's countenance darkened, for his memory
reverted to his kicking. "I owe them no good will, considering the
brunet one's treatment of me that night. Prejudice or no prejudice,
Pudd'nhead, I don't like them, and when they get their deserts you're not
going to find me sitting on the mourner's bench."
He took up another strip of glass, and exclaimed:
"Why, here's old Roxy's label! Are you going to ornament the royal
palaces with nigger paw marks, too? By the date here, I was seven months
old when this was done, and she was nursing me and her little nigger cub.
There's a line straight across her thumbprint. How comes that?" and Tom
held out the piece of glass to Wilson.
"That is common," said the bored man, wearily. "Scar of a cut or a
scratch, usually"--and he took the strip of glass indifferently, and
raised it toward the lamp.
All the blood sank suddenly out of his face; his hand quaked, and he
gazed at the polished surface before him with the glassy stare of a
corpse.
"Great heavens, what's the matter with you, Wilson? Are you going to
faint?"
Tom sprang for a glass of water and offered it, but Wilson shrank
shuddering from him and said:
"No, no!--take it away!" His breast was rising and falling, and he moved
his head about in a dull and wandering way, like a person who had been
stunned. Presently he said, "I shall feel better when I get to bed; I
have been overwrought today; yes, and overworked for many days."
"Then I'll leave you and let you get to your rest. Good night, old man."
But as Tom went out he couldn't deny himself a small parting gibe:
"Don't take it so hard; a body can't win every time; you'll hang somebody
yet."
Wilson muttered to himself, "It is no lie to say I am sorry I have to
begin with you, miserable dog though you are!"
He braced himself up with a glass of cold whisky, and went to work again.
He did not compare the new finger marks unintentionally left by Tom a few
minutes before on Roxy's glass with the tracings of the marks left on the
knife handle, there being no need for that (for his trained eye), but
busied himself with another matter, muttering from time to time, "Idiot
th