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The Damned Thing, by Ambrose Bierce
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Title: The Damned Thing 1898, From "In the Midst of Life"
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Release Date: October 24, 2007 [EBook #23172]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAMNED THING ***
Produced by David Widger
THE DAMNED THING
By Ambrose Bierce
Reprinted by permission. From "In the Midst of Life," copyright, 1898, by G. P. Putnam's Sons
I
By THE light of a tallow candle, which had been placed on one end of a rough table, a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light upon it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent and motionless, and, the room being small, not very far from the table. By extending an arm any one of them could have touched the eighth man, who lay on the table, face upward, partly covered by a sheet, his arms at his sides. He was dead.
The man with the book was not reading aloud, and no one spoke; all seemed to be waiting for s