, but had been ordered by Capt. McGillicuddy to sit down and
keep quiet. He took a seat on a stump, pulled a large bandana out of
his beaver crowned hat, wiped his bald head, and anxiously surveyed the
scene as if looking for an opportunity when the power and dignity of the
State of Tennessee might be invoked to advantage.

Only Mrs. Bolster retained her aggressiveness and her tongue. If
anything, she seemed to be more savage and virulent than ever. She was
wild that she had been outwitted, and particularly by Si, whose fluent
speech had returned the moment the{224} firecrackers went oif. She
poured out volleys of scorching epithets on all the Yankees from
President Lincoln down to Corp'l Si Klegg, and fervently invoked for
them speedy death and eternal torment where the worm dieth not and the
fire is not quenched.

Capt. McGillicuddy rounded up his prisoners, took arms from those
who still retained them, had Si and Shorty do what they could toward
dressing the Major's wound, and then began an examination of the house.

He found abundant evidence of all that he, Si and Shorty had believed
of it. It was a rendezvous for spies, both great and small--both those,
like Mrs. Bolster, who infested our camps, and got news of whatever
was going on there, and those who operated on a larger scale, passing
directly from the Headquarters of the rebels to the Headquarters of
ours, and to the rear, and the sources of information at Nashville
and Louisville. It was an important station on the route for smuggling
gun-caps, quinine, medicines and other contraband from the North.
Quantities of these were there waiting to be forwarded. As the source of
the fighting whisky introduced into the camp of the 200th Ind. too much
was known of it to require any further information. And it was more than
probable that it was the scene of darker crimes--Union soldiers lured
thither under some pretext, murdered and robbed.

"How in the world am I going to break this infernal nest up?" said
Capt. McGillicuddy, with a puzzled air, after he had ordered the whisky
destroyed and the other things gotten in shape to send{225} back to
camp. "By rights, I ought to burn that house down, but that would leave
all these children without shelter. By the same token, I ought to shoot
or at least send off to prison that old she-catamount, but that would
mean starving the children to death. I declare, I don't know what to
do."

He had drawn apart a little with Si