Knowing all too well how little encouragement the frontiersman required to embark on one of his interminable disquisitions—and fearing that he might misconstrue the widow’s hyperbole for a literal invitation—I hastily cleared my throat in an effort to deflect our hostess’ attention away from my companion.

This stratagem proved immediately effective. Casting a curious gaze in my direction, the elderly widow inquired: “But who is this handsome—if exceedingly sombre-looking—young man at your side?”

“Mr. Edgar Poe,” I declared with a polite bow. “At your service.”

“Poe?” she repeated. “A relation of the late General David Poe?”

“I am proud to be known as his grandson,” I declared with an acknowledging nod.

“Then you must also be related to that splendid, though ill-fated, young woman, the late Elizabeth Poe.”

“She was,” I said in a voice heavily fraught with emotion, “my own darling mother.”

Clasping her hands and raising them to her enormous bosom, the widow exclaimed: “Her untimely demise was a great loss to every lover of the theatre.”

“It was a tragedy of indescribable magnitude for all who knew her,” I tremulously replied.

“But to what do I owe the honor of this visit from two such distinguished gentlemen?” the widow inquired.

“The occasion for our visit,” I said, “is, in fact, connected to that bygone era when the American stage was fortunate enough to be graced by the unexcelled performances of my dear, departed mother.”

“Really?” said Mrs. Nicodemus in an incredulous tone as she cast an inquisitive gaze back and forth between Crockett and myself. “But that was so many years ago!”

“True enough,” Crockett said. “But there just ain’t no way of telling when things might turn up again after a considerable spell of time. Why, I once knowed a feller by the name of Cyrus Culpepper that got shot in the posterity during a skirmish with some redskins, and that ball got buried so deep in his flesh that there just warn’t no way of digging it out. Well, ol’ Cyrus he recovered by and by. Then one day—maybe ten, fifteen years later—he was sitting down to dinner when he felt something queer tickling him deep down in his throat, like as if he had a cherry pit stuck in there. So he coughs, and he spits, and then all of a sudden, something comes shooting out of his mouth and goes sailing dear across the table! It was that ol’lead ball! Danged if it hadn’t worked itself up from his bottom dear on into his throat!”

As was so frequently the case with the frontiers-man’s anecdotes, this one had the effect of reducing me to a state of near-stupefaction. For a moment, I simply stared at him wordlessly. Mrs. Nicodemus, on the other hand, emitted a squeal of delight. “Oh, Colonel Crockett,” she exclaimed “You are—as you yourself would undoubtedly put it—a regular humdinger.”