"You scoundrel," said Legrand, hissing out the syllables from between
his clenched teeth, "you infernal black villain! speak, I tell you!
answer me this instant, without prevarication! which--which is your
left eye?"
"Oh, my golly, Massa Will! ain't dis here my lef' eye for sartain?"
roared the terrified Jupiter, placing his hand upon his _right_ organ
of vision, and holding it there with a desperate pertinacity, as if in
immediate dread of his master's attempt at a gouge.
"I thought so! I knew it! hurrah!" vociferated Legrand, letting the
negro go, and executing a series of curvets and caracoles[13], much to
the astonishment of his valet, who, arising from his knees, looked
mutely from his master to myself, and then from myself to his master.
"Come! we must go back," said the latter; "the game's not up yet;" and
he again led the way to the tulip-tree.
"Jupiter," said he, when he reached its foot, "come here! was the
skull nailed to the limb with the face outwards, or with the face to
the limb?"
"De face was out, massa, so dat de crows could get at de eyes good,
widout any trouble."
"Well, then, was it this eye or that through which you dropped the
beetle?"--here Legrand touched each of Jupiter's eyes.
"'Twas dis eye, massa--de lef' eye--jis as you tell me," and here it
was his right eye that the negro indicated.
"That will do--we must try it again.
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