The burden of my thought was, How much did I divulge?
How much does he know ?--what a distress is this uncertainty! But by and by I evolved an idea--I would wake my brother and probe him with a supposititious case.

I shook him up, and said-- 'Suppose a man should come to you drunk--' 'This is foolish--I never get drunk.' 'I don't mean you, idiot--I mean the man.

Suppose a MAN should come to you drunk, and borrow a knife, or a tomahawk, or a pistol, and you forgot to tell him it was loaded, and--' 'How could you load a tomahawk ?' 'I don't mean the tomahawk, and I didn't say the tomahawk; I said the pistol.

Now don't you keep breaking in that way, because this is serious.

There's been a man killed.' 'What! in this town ?' 'Yes, in this town.' 'Well, go on--I won't say a single word.' 'Well, then, suppose you forgot to tell him to be careful with it, because it was loaded, and he went off and shot himself with that pistol--fooling with it, you know, and probably doing it by accident, being drunk.