'You talk so much I can't sleep.'
I came to a sitting posture in an instant, with my kidneys in my throat
and my hair on end.
'What did I say. Quick - out with it - what did I say?'
'Nothing much.'
'It's a lie - you know everything.'
'Everything about what?'
'You know well enough. About THAT.'
'About WHAT? - I don't know what you are talking about. I think you are
sick or crazy or something. But anyway, you're awake, and I'll get to
sleep while I've got a chance.'
He fell asleep and I lay there in a cold sweat, turning this new terror
over in the whirling chaos which did duty as my mind. The burden of my
thought was, How much did I divulge? How much does he know? - what a
distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea - I would
wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case. I shook him
up, and said -
'Suppose a man should come to you drunk - '
'This is foolish - I never get drunk.'
'I don't mean you, idiot - I mean the man. Suppose a MAN should come to
you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you
forgot to tell him it was loaded, and - '
'How could you load a tomahawk?'
'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the
pistol.
