As he came up he held in his hand the identical piece of bread I had seen the little darkey munching on. It was a small, wet, half-raw fragment of corn ash-cake, and it had moulded on one edge a complete cast of that little nigger's mouth, the perfect print of every tooth. The Doctor had bought it from him for fifty cents, and now, wanted to divide it with us four--a rather heroic thought that was, in a man hungry as a wolf. Of course we young fellows flatly refused to divide it, as we knew the Doctor, twice our age, needed it more than we. We said, "We were not hungry; couldn't eat anything to save us." A lie, that I hope the recording Angel, considering the motive, didn't take down; or, if he did, I hope he added a note explaining the circumstances.
We then began to joke the Doctor about the print of the little darkey's teeth on his bread and suggested to him, to break off that part. "No, indeed," said the Doctor, gloating over his precious ash-cake, "Bread's too scarce, _I_ don't mind about the little nigger's teeth, I can't spare a crumb." And when he found he could not force us to take any, he ate it all up.
Indifference to the tooth prints was a perfectly reasonable sentiment, under the circumstances, and one in which we all would have shared, for we were wolfish enough to have eaten the "little nigger" himself. The Doctor didn't mind the little chap's tooth marks _then_ but--he did _afterwards_. After he had been pacified with a square meal, the idea wasn't so pleasant, and though we often recalled the incident, afterwards, the Doctor could not remember _this part of it_. He remembered the piece of ash-cake, but, somehow, he could not be brought to recall the tooth marks in it. Not he!
It was about eleven o'clock when we passed Verdiersville. Soon after, we turned down a road, which led over to the plank road on which A. P. Hill's column was moving. Hour after hour all the morning, reports had come flying back along the columns, that our people, at the front, had seen nothing but Federal Cavalry; hadn't been able to unearth any infantry at all. An impression began to get about that maybe after all, there had been a mistake, and that Grant's army was not in front of us.