"Oh, do I?" cried the cook. "By blood! I've half a mind to interest you more. But don't look at me like that--I tell you, I don't like your eye!" He tried to shield himself from that unmoved gaze. "You're interested, are you? You'd like to put my case before your influential friends back East? You with your little bag of rocks and your little hammer and your gloves! Did you ever in your life see anyone who wasn't a nickel-plated angel? Did you ever run across a real live blackguard out of a story paper? Did you ever see a man who couldn't show his face in a settlement by the light of day, and had to take up any job that kept him out of sight? I don't know why, but I've got to shoot my mouth off now if it hangs me. I've got to blab or go stark mad!" "I understand," said the professor. "I was one of them patriots," Budd went on, speaking almost mechanically, as though hypnotized, "who enlisted for the boodle and then skipped out to work the racket somewhere else." "In point of fact, a bounty jumper," his listener put in. "Yes," agreed the cook, "that's what I was. They were paying three hundred gold for likely men to go down South and head off bullets, and that beat getting drafted, so I joined. Oh, those were great old days, great old days!" "How long were you in the service?" "About an hour and a quarter the first time," Budd replied. "It happened in New York, and when I'd signed the roll they put me in a squad to march off somewhere to get our uniforms. The sergeant was a tall guy, greener than spinach, who'd drifted down from Maine a week before, and didn't know no more about New York than a bull calf knows about the New Jerusalem; but he made a bluff and asked the feller next me, whose name was Butch, to give him points at every corner. Well, Butch directed, and His Nibs kept on commanding 'Column left!' and 'Column right!' till we got down to the toughest sort of a district--gas works and lumber yards and such. I didn't know the game, but I dropped to it quick enough when Butch says in a whisper, 'Here's our chance!' and it happened to be the neatest chance a new beginner ever had. You see, in those days when there was a fire pretty near everybody was welcome to catch hold and help pull the machine, and there was always a crowd that come along to holler and keep up the excitement. Well, that's the sort of outfit we come up against. They filled the whole street, yelling and pushing, and a feller either had to turn and run with them or get knocked down. I didn't stop to see what became of the balance of the squad. I sloped up one street and down another, going like a jack rabbit, till I found myself before a ferry boat. I paid my fare and crossed the river, just to get a chance to think." "Quite so," the professor sympathized.