I was behind my friend; so, finally, I asked him to hold my musket while I dropped out and got a drink.

Then I branched off and went home.

I was not feeling any solicitude about him of course, because I knew he was so well armed, now, that he could take care of himself without any trouble.

If I had had any doubts about that, I would have borrowed another musket for him.
I left the city pretty early the next morning, and if this grizzled man had not happened to encounter my name in the papers the other day in St.
Louis, and felt moved to seek me out, I should have carried to my grave a heart-torturing uncertainty as to whether he ever got out of the riots all right or not.

I ought to have inquired, thirty years ago; I know that.