- end_line
- 5300
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T03:55:03.879Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 5240
- text
- me. I saw another mortgage piled on my plantation; but only bought
another dozen of stout, and a dozen-dozen of Philadelphia porter. Some
of my relatives died; I wore no mourning, but for three days drank stout
in preference to porter, stout being of the darker colour. I heard the
cock crow the instant I received the unwelcome tidings.
‘Your health in this stout, oh, noble cock!’
I thought I would call on Merrymusk again, not having seen or heard of
him for some time now. Approaching the place, there were no signs of
motion about the shanty. I felt a strange misgiving. But the cock crew
from within doors, and the boding vanished. I knocked at the door. A
feeble voice bade me enter. The curtain was no longer drawn; the whole
house was a hospital now. Merrymusk lay on a heap of old clothes; wife
and children were all in their beds. The cock was perched on an old
hogshead hoop, swung from the ridge-pole in the middle of the shanty.
‘You are sick, Merrymusk,’ said I, mournfully.
‘No, I am well,’ he feebly answered. ‘Crow, Trumpet.’
I shrunk. The strong soul in the feeble body appalled me.
But the cock crew.
The roof jarred.
‘How is Mrs. Merrymusk?’
‘Well.’
‘And the children?’
‘Well. All well.’
The last two words he shouted forth in a kind of wild ecstasy of triumph
over ill. It was too much. His head fell back. A white napkin seemed
dropped upon his face. Merrymusk was dead.
An awful fear seized me.
But the cock crew.
The cock shook his plumage as if each feather were a banner. The cock
hung from the shanty roof as erewhile the trophied flags from the dome
of St. Paul’s. The cock terrified me with exceeding wonder.
I drew nigh the bedsides of the woman and children. They marked my look
of strange affright; they knew what had happened.
‘My good man is just dead,’ breathed the woman lowly. ‘Tell me true?’
‘Dead,’ said I.
The cock crew.
She fell back, without a sigh, and through long-loving sympathy was
dead.
The cock crew.
- title
- Chunk 6