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But, then, Twitchett was queer, they agreed he always was queer. He kept himself so much apart from the crowd, that until to-night, when the boys were excited about him, few had ever noticed that he was a white-haired, delicate young man, instead of a decrepit old one, and that the twitching of his lips was rather touching than comical.
He would fling himself into his book when he got back ... he had several rather neat ideas.... He noticed, with pleasure, that the young man standing by the door of Mead's Groceries touched his hat very respectfully, and Twitchett, his tailor, bowed. Come, come! There were a few people left who had some sense of Trojan supremacy. It wasn't such a bad world!
"Square as a die," whispered Boylston. "When'll we go for it?" asked Sam Baker. "Can't go till after the fun'ril," virtuously whispered Boylston. "'Twould be mighty ungrateful to go back on the corpse that's made our fortunes." "Fact," remarked Mr. Baker, holding near the nostrils of Old Twitchett a pocket-mirror he had been polishing on his sleeve.
Twitchett had rallied a little, thanks to some of Crockey's best brandy, but it was evident to those who saw him that when he left Crockey's he would be entirely unconscious of the fact. Suddenly Twitchett seemed to realize as much himself, and to imagine that his exit might be made very soon, for he asked for the men who brought him in, and motioned to them to kneel beside him.
Slowly they comprehended that Twitchett was in a condition which, according to a faithful proverb, effectually precluded the telling of tales; then they gazed solemnly into each other's faces, and each man placed his dexter fore-finger upon his lips. Then Boylston Smith whispered: "Virtue is its own reward hey, Sam?" "You bet," whispered Mr. Baker, in reply. "It's on the square now, between us?"
Old Twitchett was in a very bad way. He must have been in a bad way, for Crockey, the extremely mean storekeeper at Bender, had given up his own bed to Twitchett, and when Crockey was moved with sympathy for any one, it was a sure sign that the object of his commiseration was going to soon stake a perpetual claim in a distant land, whose very streets, we are told, are of precious metal, and whose walls and gates are of rare and beautiful stones.
It was Twitchett's own fault, the boys said, with much sorrowful profanity. When they abandoned Black Peter Gulch to the Chinese, and located at Bender, Twitchett should have come along with the crowd, instead of staying there by himself, in such an unsociable way.
At any rate it was good for Twitchett that two old residents of Black Peter Gulch had, ignorant of the abandonment of the camp, revisited it, and accidentally found him insensible, yet alive, on the floor of his hut.
Old Deacon Baggs mildly suggested that perhaps he only washed out such gold as he actually needed to purchase eatables with, but the boys smiled derisively they didn't like to laugh at the deacon's gray hairs, but he was queer. Old Twitchett was buried, and Sam Baker and Boylston Smith reverently uncovered with the rest of the boys, while Deacon Baggs made an extempore prayer.
If Twitchett finished his remark, it was heard only by auditors in some locality yet unvisited by Sam Baker and Boylston Smith, who still knelt beside the dead man's face, and with averted eyes listened for the remainder of Twitchett's last sentence.
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