You are acquiring some experience in such matters,
Bunny. I ask you, was there ever a better get-out? Last night's
was something like it, only never such a certainty. And I saw it
from the beginning--saw to the end before I had finished my soup!
"To increase my chances, the cashier, who also lived in the bank,
was away over the holidays, had actually gone down to Melbourne
to see us play; and the man who 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 is 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!
"But, now that I had had more than enough of it, Ewbank would
come back to the subject.
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