Did some one mean to fix it so the Bunkers would rob us of the satchel
and thus let everybody off? And if so, what about me? I should have had
to fight for the money, for that was what I was hired for. Was I to be
killed to save Judge Stone, or Governor Wade, and if so, which?
My part in the affair was never much spoken of in the hot newspaper and
stump-speech quarrels over the matter; but after a while, when I had had
time to figure it all out, I began to think I had not been treated quite
right; but what was I anyhow? This was another thing that made me sore
at all the Monterey Centre crowd, including the elder and grandma, with
their truckling to Gowdy and Wade and Stone and the rest who helped the
elder build his church. I suppose that the stolen money, some of it,
went to pay for that church; but if every church had remained unbuilt
that has stolen money in it, there would be fewer temples pointing, as
the old song says, with taper spire to heaven, wouldn't there?
Of course these scandalous matters were soon lost sight of in the
excitement of the Civil War. This thing which changed all our lives the
way war does, came upon me like a clap of thunder. I was living like a
hermit, and working like a horse, not trying to make any splurge, as I
might have done, even having given up the idea of getting me a team of
horses, which I had been thinking of for a while back with the notion of
maybe getting a buggy and beginning to take Virginia out buggy-riding,
and thus working up in a year or two to popping the question to her.
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