I moved a little aside, with a sort of thrill, to give him freer access
to my uncle, in the hope that he might, perhaps, throw a light upon the
history of this remarkable memorial. The old fellow had a rat-like gray
eye--the other was hid under a black patch--and there was a deep red
scar across his forehead, slanting from the patch that covered the
extinguished orb. His face was purplish, the tinge deepening towards the
lumpish top of his nose, on the side of which stood a big wart, and he
carried a great walking-cane over his shoulder, and bore, as it seemed
to me, an intimidating, but caricatured resemblance to an old portrait
of Oliver Cromwell in my Whig grandfather's parlour.
'You don't think it a bullet wound, Sir?' said my uncle, mildly, and
touching his hat--for coming of a military stock himself, he always
treated an old soldier with uncommon respect.
'Why, please your raverence,' replied the man, reciprocating his
courtesy; 'I _know_ it's not.'
'And what _is_ it, then, my good man?' interrogated the sexton, as one
in authority, and standing on his own dunghill.
'The trepan,' said the fogey, in the tone in which he'd have cried
'attention' to a raw recruit, without turning his head, and with a
scornful momentary skew-glance from his gray eye.
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