"Look here!" said Myers. "I'm the last man to do a dead friend an injury, but I ain't going to have any departed spirit coming in here and giving this lady hysterics. You pack up and go back, and stay there, or I'll have you hustled into a tomb quicker'n lightning. Hurry up now; don't stop to think about it!"
"This beats the very old Harry!" said the major, in astonishment.
"No answering back, now," said Myers. "When I want communications from the other world, I'll hunt up a spiritualist medium and get my information out of knocks on a table. All you've got to do is to creep off into the tomb somewhere and behave."
"You're perfectly certain I'm dead, are you?" said the major, getting calmer.
"Well, then, I'm going to hammer you with this club, and I reckon you'll find me the most energetic corpse in the county."
They say that the fight was terrific. First the major was on top, then Myers; and as they rolled over and over in the porch the widow sat by and surveyed the scene. Finally, Myers explained that upon the whole he believed he had enough; and when the major had given him a few supplementary thumps, he got up, and gazing at the prostrate Myers and at the widow, he said,
"Take her; take her, young man. You're welcome to her. I wouldn't have her if she was the only woman in the temperate zone. But let me tell you, before you get her, that when you are married to her you'll wish something'd happen to send you down to the bottom of the ocean and anchor you there."
Then the major slammed the gate and left; and he started life afresh in New York. Myers has written to him since to say that the only grudge that he has against him is that he didn't kill him in that fight in the porch, for the widow has made death seem blissful to him; and the major's answer was that the reason why he spared his life was that he wanted to make his revenge fiendish.
Of course I do not vouch for this part of the story which tells of the major's return. General Trumps is responsible for that; and I know that sometimes, when his imagination is unduly warmed, he is prone to exaggeration. The general's own domestic matters are in the most charming condition. According to his own story, he never had any unpleasant feeling in his family but once. Several years ago he was in Williamsport attending to his business. While there he had a strong premonition that something was the matter at home; so, in order to satisfy himself, he determined to run down to Philadelphia in the next train. In the mean time, his mother-in-law sent him a despatch to this effect: "Another daughter has just arrived. Hannah is poorly; come home at once." The lines were down, however, and the despatch was held over; and meanwhile the general reached home, and found his wife doing pretty well and the nurse walking around with an infant a day old. After staying twenty-four hours, and finding that everybody was tolerably comfortable, he returned to Williamsport without anything having been said about the despatch, his mother-in-law supposing of course that he had received it. The day after his arrival the lines were fixed, and that night he received a despatch from the telegraph office dated that very day, and conveying the following intelligence: