“This is rather a nice evening. Let me see, it is a full moon; a good coon night. What say you long Tom, (raising his gun) how would you like to drop one of the red coons before morning. I would; that would make just 87 red devils that I have sent to the Spirit land since Muswink murdered my father. Tell me, O ye stars, (looking up) for what was he murdered. For being a friend to the Indian, for furnishing them with shelter and food, for being a good man, a kind neighbor, a God-fearing and God-loving man. Father, my father, you sleep on the banks of the Delaware; no only your body lies there, your spirit is here, there, everywhere it is now hovering round and about me. It is continually whispering in my ear revenge, revenge. It is God’s will, father that your death should be avenged. It is God’s will that your son Tom Quick should be the avenger. For this I have left home and the comforts of civilized life and burrowed in the ground like a rabbit. For this I left the mother that gave me birth, and taught me to say: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep; If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.’ That kind good and generous mother now kneels on the old family hearth and mourns the loss of the living as though dead. Maggie too; God bless her. She is here; I feel her continually knocking at my heart, saying ‘Uncle Tom, come home.’ Pray on dear girl, and when my mission is ended, may father, son, mother and child meet in that happy hunting ground where there will be no father’s blood to avenge.”