University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

When Horse Shoe left the apartment, he discovered the person,
whose demeanor had excited his suspicion, leaning against a post of
the porch, in front of the house. The moonlight, as it partially fell
upon this man's figure, disclosed a frame of sufficient mould to raise
a surmise, that, in whatever form of communication the sergeant
might accost him, he was not likely to find a very tractable subject
to his hand. Robinson, however, without troubling himself with the
contemplation of such a contingency, determined to delay his visit to
the stable long enough to allow himself the expression of a word of
warning or rebuke, to indicate to the stranger the necessity for
restraining his curiosity in regard to the guests of the inn. With
this view he halted upon the porch, while he scanned the person
before him, and directed an earnest gaze into his face. The stranger,
slightly discomfited by this eager scrutiny, turned his back upon his
visitor, and, with an air of idle musing, threw his eyes towards the
heavens, in which position he remained until summoned by the
familiar accost of Horse Shoe.

“Well! and what do you make of the moon? As sharp an eye
as you have in your head, neighbor, I'm thinking it will do you no
great sarvice there. You're good at your spying trade; but you
will get nothing out of her; she keeps her secrets.”

Startled by this abrupt greeting, which was made in a tone half-way
between jest and earnest, the stranger quickly confronted his
challenger, and bestowed upon him a keen and inquiring inspection;
then breaking into a laugh, he replied with a free and impudent
swagger—

“You are mistaken, Master Jack Pudding. What says the proverb?
Wit's in the wane when the moon's at full. Now, our
mistress has let me into a secret. She tells me that you will not
lose your wits, when she comes to her growth. The reason why?
first, because she never troubles herself with so small a stock as yours,
and second, because your thick skull is moon-proof; so, you're safe,
friend.”

“A word in your ear,” said Horse Shoe; “you are not safe,
friend, if you are cotched again peeping through the chinks of the
window, or sneaking upon the dark side of the doorway, to pick up
a crumb of talk from people that are not axing your company.
Keep that in your memory.”

“It's a base lie, Mr. Bumpkin, if you mean to insinuate that I
did either.”

“Oh, quiet and easy, good man! No flusterifications here! I
am civil and peaceable. Take my advice, and chaw your cud in
silence, and go to bed at a reasonable hour, without minding what
folks have to say who come to the widow Dimock's. It only run in
my head to give you a polite sort of a warning. So, good night; I
have got business at the stable.”

Before the other could reply, Robinson strode away to look after
the accommodations of the horses.

“The devil take this impertinent ox-driver!” muttered the man
to himself, after the sergeant had left him; “I have half a mind to
take his carcase in hand, just to give it the benefit of a good, wholesome
manipulation. A queer fellow, too—a joker! A civil, peaceable
man!—the hyperbolical rogue! Well, I'll see him out, and,
laugh or fight, he shan't want a man to stand up to him!”

Having by this train of reflection brought himself into a mood
which might be said to hover upon the isthmus between anger and
mirth, ready to fall to either side as the provocation might serve,
the stranger sauntered slowly towards the stable, with a hundred
odd fancies as to the character of the man he sought running
through his mind. Upon his arrival there he found that Horse
Shoe was occupied in the interior of the building, and being still in
a state of uncertainty as to the manner in which it was proper he
should greet our redoubtable friend, he took a seat on a small bench
at the door, resolved to wait for that worthy's reappearance. This

delay had a soothing effect upon his temper, for as he debated the
subject over in his mind, certain considerations of policy seemed to
indicate to him the necessity of making himself better acquainted
with the business and quality of the individual whom he came to
meet.

After a few moments, Horse Shoe was seen with old Tony at the
stable door, where, notwithstanding the unexpected presence of the
man to whom he had so lately offered his unwelcome advice, and
upon whom he now conferred not the slightest notice, he continued
uninterruptedly, and with deliberate composure, to give his orders
upon what, at that moment, doubtless, he deemed matter of much
graver importance than any concern he might have in the visit of
his new acquaintance.

“Do what I tell you, Tony; get a piece of linen, rub it well over
with tallow, and bring it here along with a cup of vinegar. The
beast's back is cut with the saddle, and you must wash the sore first
with the vinegar, and then lay on the patch. Go, old fellow, and
Mrs. Dimock, may be, can give you a strip of woollen cloth to sarve
as a pad.”

With these instructions the negro retired towards the house.

“I see you understand your business,” said the stranger. “You
look to your horse's back at the end of a day's journey, and you
know how to manage a sore spot. Vinegar is the thing! You
have had a long ride?”

“How do you know that?” inquired Horse Shoe.

“Know it! any man might guess as much by the way you shovelled
down your supper. I happened by chance to pass your window,
and seeing you at it, faith! for the soul of me I couldn't help
taking a few turns more, just to watch the end of it. Ha! ha! ha!
give me the fellow that does honor to his stomach! And your dolt
head must be taking offence at my looking at you! Why, man,
your appetite was a most beautiful rarity; I wouldn't have lost the
sport of it for the pleasure of the best supper I ever ate myself.”

“Indeed!” said Robinson, drily.

“Pease upon the trencher!” exclaimed the other, with the air of
a pot companion; “that's the true music for good fellows of your
kidney! But it isn't every where that you will find such bountiful
quarters as you get here at the Blue Ball; in that cursed southern

country a man like you would breed a famine, if you even do not
find one ready made to your hand when you get there.”

“Where mought you be from?” asked the sergeant, with great
gravity, without responding to the merriment of his visitor, and
purposely refraining from the answer which he saw it was the
other's drift to obtain relative to the course of his travel.

“It was natural enough that you should have mistaken my
object,” continued the stranger, heedless of Horse Shoe's abrupt
question, “and have suspected me for wanting to hear some of your
rigmarole; but there you did me wrong. I forgive you for that,
and, to tell you the truth, I hate your —”

“That's not to the purpose,” said Horse Shoe; “I axed you a
civil question, and maybe, that's more than you have a right to.
You can answer it or let it alone. I want to know where mought
you be from?”

“Since you are bent upon it, then,” replied the other, suddenly
changing his tone, and speaking with a saucy emphasis, “I'll
answer your question, when you tell me what mought be your
right to know.”

“It's the custom of our country,” rejoined Horse Shoe, “I don't
know what it may be in yourn, to larn a little about the business
of every man we meet; but we do it by fair, out-and-out question
and answer—all above board, and we hold in despise all sorts of
contwistifications, either by laying of tongue-traps, or listening under
caves of houses.”

“Well, most wise and shrewd master, what do you call my
country? Ha! ha! ha! I would be sworn you think you have
found some mare's nest! If it were not that your clown pate is
somewhat addled by over feeding, I would hold your speech to
be impertinent. My country, I'd have your sagacity to understand
—”

“Tut, man, it arn't worth the trouble of talking about it! I
never saw one of your people that I didn't know him by the first
word that came out of his lips. You are an Englishman, and a red
coat into the bargain, as we call them in these parts. You have
been a sodger. Now, never bounce at that, man! There's no great
harm in belonging to that craft. They listed you, as likely as not,
when you was flusticated with liquor, and you took your pay;

there was a bargain, and it was your business to stand to it. But
I have got a piece of wisdom to whisper to you, insomuch as you
are not in the most agreeablest part of the world to men of your
colors, it would be best to be a little more shy against giving offence.
You said some saucy things to me just now, but I don't grudge
your talking, because you see, I am an onaccountable hard sort of
person to be instigated by speeching.”

“Verily, you are a most comical piece of dulness,” said the other,
in a spirit of raillery. “In what school did you learn your philosophy,
friend? You have been brought up to the wholesome tail of
the plough, I should say—an ancient and reputable occupation.”

“When I obsarved, just now,” replied Robinson, somewhat sternly,
“that I couldn't be instigated, I meant to be comprehended as laying
down a kind of general doctrine that I was a man not given to
quarrels; but still, if I suspicioned a bamboozlement, which I am
not far from at this present speaking, if it but come up to the conflagrating
of only the tenth part of the wink of an eye, in a project to
play me off, fore God, I confess myself to be as weak in the flesh as
e'er a rumbunctious fellow you mought meet on the road.”

“Friend,” said the other, “I do not understand thy lingo. It
has a most clodpolish smack. It is neither grammar, English, nor
sense.”

“Then, you are a damned, onmannerly rascal,” said Horse-Shoe,
“and that's grammar, English, and sense, all three.”

“Ha, you are at that! Now, my lubberly booby, I understand
you,” returned the other, springing to his feet. “Do you know to
whom you are speaking?”

“Better than you think for,” replied the sergeant, placing himself
in an erect position to receive what he had a right to expect, the
threatened assault of his adversary, “I know you, and guess your
arrand here.”

“You do?” returned the other sharply. “You have been juggling
with me, sir. You are not the gudgeon I took you for. It has
suited your purpose to play the clown, eh? Well, sir, and pray,
what do you guess?”

“Nothing good of you, considering how things go here. Suppose
I was to say you was, at this self-same identical time, a sodger of
the king's? I have you there!”

The stranger turned on his heel and retreated a few paces, evidently
perplexed at the new view in which the sergeant suddenly
rose to his apprehension. His curiosity and his interest were both
excited to gain a more distinct insight into a man whom he had
mistaken for a mere simpleton, but whose hints showed him to be
shrewdly conversant with the personal concerns of one, whom, apparently,
he had seen to-night for the first time in his life. With this
anxiety upon his mind, he again approached the sergeant, as he
replied to the last question.

“Well, and if I were? It is a character of which I should have
no reason to be ashamed.”

“That's well said!” exclaimed Horse Shoe. “Up and speak out,
and never be above owning the truth; that's the best sign that can
be of a man. Although it mought be somewhat dangerous, just
hereabouts, to confess yourself a sodger of King George—let me tell
you, that, being against you, I am not the person to mislest you on
that head, by spreading the news abroad, or setting a few dozen of
whigs upon your scent, which is a thing easily done. If your business
here is peaceable and lawful, and you don't let your tongue
brawl against quiet and orderly people, you are free to come and go
for me.”

“Thank you, sir: but look you; it isn't my way to answer questions
about my own business, and I scorn to ask any man's leave to come
and go where and when my occasions call me.”

“If it isn't your way to answer questions about your own business,”
replied Horse Shoe, “it oughtn't to be your way to ax them about
other people's; but that don't disturb me; it is the rule of the war
to question all comers and goers that we happen to fall in with,
specially now, when there's a set of your devils scampering and raging
about in Carolina, hardly a summer day's ride off this province,
burning houses and killing cattle, and turning everything topsy-turvy,
with a pack of rascally tories to back them. In such times all sorts
of tricks are played, such as putting on coats that don't belong
to a man, and deceiving honest people by lies, and what not.”

“You are a stranger to me,” said the other; “but let me tell you,
without circumlocution or periphrase, I am a free born subject of the
king, and I see no reason why, because some of his people have
turned rebels a true man, who travels his highway, should be obliged

to give an account of himself to every inquisitive fellow who chooses
to challenge it. Suppose I tell you that you meddle with matters
that don't concern you?”

“Then you mought chance to get your head in your hand, that's
all. And, hark you, if it wan't that I am rather good-natured, I
mought happen to handle you a little rough for that nicknaming of
the friends of liberty, by calling them rebels. It doesn't suit such
six-pence-a-day fellows as you, who march right or left at the bidding
of your master, to rob a church or root up an honest man's peaceful
hearth, without so much as daring to have a thought about the
righteousness of the matter—it doesn't suit such to be befouling them
that fight for church and fireside both, with your scurvy, balderdash
names.”

“Well, egad! you are a fine bold fellow who speaks his thoughts,
that's not to be denied!” said the stranger, again suddenly changing
his mood, and resorting to his free and easy address. “You suit
these times devilish well. I can't find it in my heart to quarrel with
you. We have both been somewhat rough in speech, and so, the
account is square. But now tell me, after all, are you sure you have
guessed me right? How do you know I am not one of these very
rebels myself?”

“For two good and point-blank reasons. First, you dar'n't deny
that you have pocketed the king's money and worn his coat—that's
one. And, second, you are now here under the orders of one of his
officers.”

“No, no, good friend,” said the man, with a voice of less boldness
than heretofore, “you are mistaken for once in your life. So far
what you say, I don't deny—I am in the service of a gentleman, who
for some private affairs of his own has come on a visit to this part
of the province, and I admit I have been in the old country.”

“I am not mistaken, good friend,” drawled out Robinson, affectedly.
“You come from the south. I can tell men's fortunes without
looking into the palms of their hands.”

“You are wrong again,” said the other tartly, as he grew angry
at being thus badgered by his opponent, “I come from the north.”

“That's true and it's false both,” returned Robinson. “From the
north, I grant you—to the south with Sir Henry, and from the south
up here. You will find I can conjure a little, friend.”

“The devil take your conjuring!” exclaimed the other, as he bit
his lip and strode restlessly backward and forward; which perplexity
being observed by the sergeant, he did not fail to aggravate it by
breaking into a hoarse laugh, as he said—

“It wa'n't worth your while to try to deceive me. I knowed you
by manifold and simultaneous signs. Him that sets about scouting
after other people's secrets, ought to be wary enough to larn to
keep his own. But don't take it so to heart, neighbor, there's no
occasion for oneasiness—I have no mind to harm you.”

“Master bully,” said the stranger, planting himself immediately
in front of the sergeant, “in England, where I was bred, we play at
cudgels, and sometimes give broken heads; and some of us are gifted
with heavy fists, wherewith we occasionally contrive to box a rude
fellow who pries too much into our affairs.”

“In our country,” replied Horse Shoe, “we generally like to get a
share of whatever new is stirring, and, though we don't practise
much with cudgels, yet, to sarve a turn, we do, now and then, break
a head or so; and, consarning that fist work you happened to
touch upon, we have no condesentious seruples against a fair rap or
two over the knowledge-box, and the tripping-up of a fractious chap's
heels, in the way of a sort of a rough-and-tumble, which, may be,
you understand. You have been long enough here, mayhap, to
find that out.”

“Then, it is likely, it would please you to have a chance at such
a game? I count myself a pretty tolerable hand at the play,” said
the stranger, with a composure corresponding to that exhibited by
Horse Shoe.

“Ho, ho! I don't want to hurt you, man,” replied the Sergeant.
“You will get yourself into trouble. You are hot-headeder than is
good for your health.”

“As the game was mentioned, I thought you might have a fancy
to play it.”

“To be sure I would,” said Horse Shoe, “rather than disappoint
you in any reasonable longing. For the sake of quiet—being a
peaceable man, I will take the trouble to oblige you. Where, do
you think, would be the likeliest spot to have it?”

“We may readily find a piece of ground at hand,” replied the
other. “It is a good moonlight play, and we may not be interrupted

if we get a little distance off before the negro comes back. Toe to
toe, and face to face, suits me best with both friend and foe.”

“A mule to drive and a fool to hold back, are two of the contrariest
things I know,” said Robinson, “and so, seeing that you are in
arnest about it, let us go at it without more ado upon the first good
bit of grass we can pop upon along the river.”

In this temper the two antagonists left the vicinity of the stable,
and walked some hundred paces down along the bank of the stream.
The man with whom Horse Shoe was about to hold this strange
encounter, and who now walked quietly by his side, had the erect
and soldierly port of a grenadier. He was square-shouldered, compact
and muscular, and the firmness of his gait, his long and easy
stride, and the free swing of his arm as he moved onward in the
moonlight, showed Robinson that he was to engage with an adversary
of no common capacity. There was, perhaps, on the other side, some
abatement in this man's self-confidence, when the same light disclosed
to his deliberate inspection the brawny proportions of the sergeant,
which, in the engrossment of the topics bandied about in the late
dialogue, he had not so accurately regarded.

When they had walked the distance I have mentioned, they had
little difficulty to select a space of level ground with a sufficient mould
for the purpose of the proposed trial of strength.

“Here's as pretty a spot as we mought find on the river,” said
Robinson, “and so get ready, friend. Before we begin, I have a
word to say. This here bout is not a thing of my seeking, and I
take it to be close akin to downright tom-foolery, for grown up men
to set about thumping and hammering each other, upon account of
a brag of who's best man, or such like, when the whole univarse is
full of occasions for scuffles, and stands in need of able-bodied fellows,
to argufy the pints of right and wrong, that can't be settled by
preachers, or books, or lawyers. I look upon this here coming out
to fight no better than a bit of arrant nonsense. But, as you will
have it, it's no consarn of mine to stop you.”

“You are welcome to do your worst,” replied the other, “and the
less preaching you make with it, the more saving of time.”

“My worst,” interrupted Horse Shoe, “is almost more than I have
the conscience to do to any man who isn't a downright flagratious
enemy; and, once more, I would advise you to think before you

draw me into a fray; you are flustrated, and sot upon a quarrel, and
mayhap, you conjecture that by drawing me out from behind my
retrenchments, by which is signified my good nature, and forcing me
to deploy into line and open field, you'll get the advantage of an
old sodger over me; but there, Mr. Dragoon, you are mistaken. In
close garrison or open field, in siege or sally, crossing a defile or
reconnoitring on a broad road, I am not apt to lose my temper, or
strike without seeing where my blow is to hit. Now, that is all I
have to say: so, come on.”

“You are not what you seem,” said the antagonist, in a state of
wonder at the strain of the sergeant's composed and deliberate speech,
and at the familiarity which this effusion manifested with the details
of military life. “In the devil's name, who are you? But, don't
fancy I pause to begin our fight, for any other reason than that I
may know who I contend with. On the honor of a soldier, I promise
you, I will hold you to your game—man, or imp of hell—I care not.
Again, who in the devil are you?”

“You have hit it,” replied Horse Shoe. “My name is Brimstone,
I am first cousin to Belzebub.”

“You have served?”

“I have.”

“And belong to the army yet?”

“True again; and I am as tough a sodger, and may be I mought
say, as old a sodger as yourself.”

“Your hand, fellow soldier. I mistook you from the beginning.
You continentals—that's the newfangled word—are stout fellows,
and have a good knack at the trick of war, though you wear rough
coats, and are savagely unrudimented in polite learning. No matter
what colors a man fights under, long usage makes a good comrade
of him; and, by my faith! I am not amongst the last to do him
honor, even though we stand in opposite ranks. As you say, most
sapient Brimstone, we are not much better than a pair of fools for
this conspiracy to knock about each other's pates, here at midnight;
but you have my pledge to it, and so, we will go at it, if it be only
to win a relish for our beds; I will teach you, to-night, some skill
in the art of mensuration. You shall measure two full ells upon this
green sod.”

“There's my hand,” said Horse Shoe; “now, if I am flung, I

promise you I won't be angry. If I sarve you in the same fashion,
you must larn to bear it.”

“With all my heart. So here I stand upon my guard. Begin.”

“Let me feel your weight,” said Robinson, laughing, as he put
one hand upon his adversary's shoulder, and the other against his
side. “Hark you, master, I feel something hard here about your
ribs; you have pistols under your coat, friend. For the sake of fair
play and keeping rid of foul blood, you had best lay them aside
before we strike. Anger comes up onawares.”

“I never part from my weapons,” replied the other, stepping back
and releasing himself from Robinson's grasp. “We are strangers;
I must know the company I am in, before I dismiss such old cronies
as these. They have got me out of a scrape before this.”

“We took hands just now,” said Robinson, angrily. “When I
give my hand, it is tantamount to a book oath that I mean fair,
round dealing with the man who takes it. I told you, besides, I was
a sodger—that ought to have contented you—and you mought
sarch my breast, inside and out, you'd seen in it nothing but honest
meanings. There's something of a suspectable rascality, after that,
in talking about pistols hid under the flaps of the coat. It's altogether
onmanful, and, what's more, onsodgerly. You are a deceit,
and an astonishment, and a hissing, all three, James Curry, and no
better, to my comprehension, than a coward. I know you of old,
although, mayhap, you disremember me. I have hearn said, by
more than one, that you was a double-faced, savage-hearted, disregardless
beast, that snashed his teeth where he darsn't bite, and
bullied them that hadn't the heart to fight; I have hearn that of
you, and, as I live, I believe it. Now, look out for your bull head,
for I will cuff you in spite of your pistols.”

With these words, Horse Shoe gave his adversary some half
dozen overpowering blows, in such quick succession as utterly defied
and broke down the other's guard; and then, seizing him by the
breast, he threw the tall and stalwart form of Curry at full length
upon the ground.

“There's your two ells for you! there's the art of menstirration,
you disgrace to the tail of a drum,” exclaimed Horse Shoe, with
accumulating wrath, as the prostrate man strove to extricate himself
from the lion grasp that held him. In this strife, Curry several

times made an effort to get his hand upon his pistol, in which he
was constantly foiled by the superior vigor of the sergeant.

“No, no,” continued the latter, as he became aware of this
attempt, “James Curry, you shall never lay hold upon your firearms
whilst I have the handling of you. Give them up, you twisting
prevaricationer; give them up, you disgracer of powder and
lead; and larn this from a rebel, that I don't blow out your brains,
only because I wouldn't accommodate the devil by flinging such a
lump of petrifaction into his clutches. There, man,” he added, as
he threw the pistols far from him into the river, his exasperation, at
the same time, moderating to a lower temperature, “get upon your
feet; and now, you may go hung for your cronies in yonder running
stream. You may count it a marcy that I haven't tossed you after
them, to wash the cowardly blood off your face. Now that you are
upon your legs, I tell you here, in the moonlight, man to man, with
nobody by to hold back your hand, that you are a lying, deceitful
skulker, that loves the dark side of a wall better than the light, and
steals the secrets of honest folks, and hasn't the heart to stand up
fairly to the man that tells you of it. Swallow that, James Curry,
and see how it will lay upon your stomach.”

“I will seek a time!” exclaimed Curry, “to right myself with your
heart's blood.”

“Pshaw! man,” replied Horse Shoe, “don't talk about heart's
blood. The next time we come into a field together, ax for Galbraith
Robinson, commonly called Horse Shoe Robinson. Find me
out, that's all. We may take a frolic together then, and I give you
my allowance to wear your pistols in your belt.”

“We may find a field yet, Horse Shoe Robinson,” returned Curry,
“and I'll not fail of my appointment. Our game will be played
with broadswords.”

“If it should so turn out, James, that you and me are to work
through a campaign in the same quarter of the world, as we have done
afore, James, I expect, I'll take the chance of some holiday to pay my
respects to you. I wont trouble you to ride far to find me; and
then, it may be broadsword or pistol, rifle or bagnet, I'm not over-scrumptious
which. Only promise I shall see you when I send for
you.”

“It's a bargain, Galbraith Robinson! Strong as you think yourself

in your cursed rough-and-tumble horseplay, I am soldier
enough for you any day. I only ask that the time may come
quickly.”

“You have no objection to give us a hand to clinch that bargain,
James?” asked Horse Shoe. “There's my paw; take it, man, I
scorn to bear malice after the hot blood cools.”

“I take it with more pleasure now,” said Curry, hastily seizing
the hand, “than I gave mine to you before to-night, because it is a
pledge that suits my humor. A good seat in a saddle, four strong
legs below me, and a sharp blade, I hold myself a match for the
best man that ever picked a flint in your lines.”

“Now, friend Curry,” exclaimed the sergeant, “good night! Go
look for your pop-guns in the river; and if you find them, hold
them as a keepsake to remember Horse Shoe Robinson. Good
night.”

Robinson left his adversary, and returned to the inn, ruminating,
as he walked, over the strange incident in which he had just been
engaged. For a while his thoughts wore a grave complexion; but,
as his careless good humor gradually broke forth through the thin
mist that enveloped it, he was found, before he reached the porch,
laughing, with a quiet chuckle, at the conceit which rose upon his
mind, as he said, half-audibly, “Odd sport for a summer night!
Howsever, every one to his liking, as the old woman said; but to
my thinking, he mought have done better if he had gone to sleep at
a proper hour, like a moralised and sober Christian.”

When he entered the parlor, he found Butler and the landlady
waiting for him.

“It is late, sergeant,” said the Major. “You have forgotten the
hour; and I began to fear you had more to say to your friend, there,
than suited the time of night.”

“All is right, by your smiling,” added the landlady; “and that's
more than I expected at the time you walked out of the room. I
couldn't go to my bed, till I was sure you and my lodger had no
disagreeable words; for, to tell you the truth, I am greatly afraid
of his hot and hasty temper.”

“There is nothing hot or hasty about him, ma'am,” replied
Robinson; “he is about as peaceable a man as you mought expect
to meet in such times as these. I only told him a little scrap of

news, and you would have thought he would have hugged me for it,
ha, ha, ha.”

“We are to sleep in the same room, sergeant,” said Butler, “and
our good hostess will show us the way to it.”

The dame, upon this hint, took a candle, and conducted her
guests to a chamber in the upper story, where, after wishing them
“a good night,” she courtesied respectfully, and left them to their
repose.

“Tell me, sergeant, what you made out of that fellow,” said
Butler, as he undressed himself. “I see that you have had some
passage with him; and, from your tarrying so long, I began to be
a little apprehensive of rough work between you. What passed,
and what have you learned?”

“Enough, major, to make us more circumscriptious against scouts,
and spies, and stratagems. When I was a prisoner at Charlestown,
there was an amazing well-built fellow, a dragoon, that had been
out with Tarleton; but, when I saw him, he was a sort of rithmatical
account-keeper and letter-scribbler for that young fighting-cock,
the Earl of Caithness, him that was aidegong to Sir Henry
Clinton. Well, this fellow had a tolerable bad name, as being a
chap that the devil had spiled, in spite of all the good that had
been pumped into him at school; for, as I have hearn, he was come
of gentle people, had a first rate edication, and I reckon, now,
major, he talks as well as a book, whereupon I have an observation.”

“Keep that until to-morrow, sergeant,” interrupted Butler, “and
go on with what you had to tell me.”

“You must be a little sleepy, major: however, this fellow, they
say, was cotched cheating with cards one day, when he was playing a
game of five shilling loo with the King or the Queen, or some of the
dukes or colonels in the guards—for he wa'n't above any thing rascally.
So, it was buzzed about, as you may suppose when a man
goes to cheating one of them big fish—and the King gave him his
choice to enlist, or go to the hulks; and he, being no fool, listed, as
a matter of course. In that way he got over here; and, as I tell
you, was a sort of sarvent to that young Earl. He sometimes came
about our quarters to list prisoners and make Tories of 'em, for his
own people kept him to do all that sort of dirty work, upon account
of the glibness of his tongue. He was a remarkable saucy fellow,

and got nothing but ill-will from the prisoners—though, I make no
doubt, the man is a tolerable sodger on sarvice. Now, after telling
you all this, major, you must know that the identical, same, particular
man that we saw looking through the porch window at us tonight”—

“Is the man you have been describing? Is it possible? Are you
sure of it?”

“I knowed him the minute I clapped eyes on him: his name is
James Curry: but, as I didn't stay long at Charlestown, and hadn't
any thing to do with him in particular, it seems he didn't remember
me.”

“You conversed with him?”

“Most sartainly I did. I wanted to gather a little consarning of his
visit up here: but the fellow's been so battered about in the wars,
that he knows how to hold his tongue. I had some mischief in me,
and did want to make him just angry enough to set his speech loose;
and, besides, I felt a little against him upon account of his misdoings
with our people in Carolina, and so, I said some rough things to
him; and, as my discourse ar'n't none of the squarest in pint of
grammar and topographical circumlocution—as Lieutenant Hopkins
used to say—why he set me down for a piece of an idiot, and began
to hoax and bamboozle me. I put that matter straight for him very
soon, by just letting him say so much and no more. And then, as
I was a peaceable man, major, he seemed to see that I didn't want
to have no quarrel with him, which made him push it at me rather
too hard, and all my civility ended in my giving him what he wanted
at first—a tolerable, regular thrashing.”

The sergeant continued to relate to Butler the details of this adventure,
which he did with more prolixity than the weariness of his
listener was able to endure; for the major, having in the progress
of the narrative got into bed, and having, in the increasing oscitancy
of his faculties, exhausted every expression of assent by which one
who listens to a tale is accustomed to notify his attention—he at
length dropped into a profound sleep, leaving the sergeant to conclude
at his leisure.

When Robinson perceived this, he had nothing left but to betake
himself, with all expedition, to his own rest; whereupon he threw off
his coat, and taking the coverings of the bed appropriated to his use,

spread them upon the floor, as he pronounced an anathema against
sleeping on feathers, (for it must be observed, that our good hostess,
at that early day, was liable to the same censure of an unnatural
attachment to feather beds in summer, which may, at the present
time,[1] be made against almost every country inn in the United
States,) and then extinguishing the candle, he stretched himself upon
the planks, as he remarked to his unconscious companion, “that he
was brought up on a hard floor;” and after one or two rolls, he fell
into that deep oblivion of cares, by which nature re-summons and
supplies the strength which toil, watching and anxiety wear down.

The speed of Horse Shoe's journey through this pleasant valley
of sleep might be measured somewhat in the same manner that the
route of a mail stage may sometimes be traced through a mountain
defile, by the notes of the coachman's horn; it was defined by the
succession of varying intonations through which he ascended the
gamut, beginning with a low but audible breathing, and rising
through the several stages of an incipient snore, a short quick bark,
and up to a snort that constituted the greatest altitude of the ascent.
Occasionally a half articulated interjection escaped him, and words
that showed in what current his dreams were sailing: “No pistols!
Look in the water, James! Ha ha!” These utterings were accompanied
with contortions of body that more than once awaked the
sleeper; but, at last, the huge bulk of Horse Shoe grew motionless
in a deep and strong sleep.

The next morning, at early dawn, our travellers resumed their
journey, which I will leave them to prosecute, whilst I conduct my
reader to the affairs and interests that dwell about the Dove Cote.