THE STEADFAST HEART
door. “Come on,” he snapped. “Tell me as we go.”
Bishwhang came panting and sobbing, uttering incoherencies from which Browning gleaned, now and then, a sentence that was intelligible.
“He come into the shop and he says to me, ‘Where is it, Bishwhang?’ and I says, ‘Where’s what?’ and he says, ‘That bar of iron, that hot iron. I kin feel it a-proddin’ into my head, but I can’t find it,’ says he, and then flops over and goes on talkin’ and mutterin’ and thrashin’ around. ‘Who done it?’ says he. ‘’Tain’t right puttin’ a hot iron into a man’s head.’ Jake, he come a-runnin’ and grabs him and holds him and yells for me to git a doctor and you. Out into the street I could hear Dave a-hollerin’, ‘Angus never done it…. He wouldn’t ’a’ done it to me.’”
Bishwhang’s fright was pitiful; he fumbled his calloused hands and whimpered, “He’s goin’ to die. He’s goin’ to die, and what’ll become of all of us then?”
“He’s going to do nothing of the sort,” Craig snapped, sharp in his anxiety. “Brace up. We’re going to need you.”
They turned in at the printing office, and through the partition Craig could hear Wilkins’s voice droning querulously—now and again rising sharp and thin. “Take it off, can‘’t you? What you want to go sticking hot type in my head
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