"Hurrah!" cried Tom, suddenly pulling up at the door of a neat
farm-house on the brow of a hill, with a clear streamlet sweeping round
its base, and a fine piece of woodland at the farther side. "Hurrah! Sam
Blain, we've come to make them foxes, you were telling of a Sunday,
smell h-ll right straight away. Here's Archer, and another Yorker with
him--leastwise an Englisher I should say--and Squire Conklin, and Bill
Speers, and that white nigger Jem! Look sharp, I say! Look sharp, cuss
you, else we'll pull off the ruff of the old humstead."
In a few minutes Sam made his appearance, armed, like the rest, with a
Queen Ann's tower-musket.
"Well! well!" he said, "I'm ready. Quit making such a clatter! Lend me a
load of powder, one of you; my horn's leaked dry, I reckon!"
Tom forthwith handed him his own, and the next thing I heard was Blain
exclaiming that it was "desperate pretty powder," and wondered if it
shot strong.
"Shoot strong? I guess you'll find it strong enough to sew you up, if
you go charging your old musket that ways!" answered Tom. "By the Lord,
Archer, he's put in three full charges!"
"Well, it will kill him, that's all!" answered Harry, very coolly; "and
there'll be one less of you.
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