ably as though they had never done
their best to exterminate one another.

"As for Abe Lincoln," declared Major Fitch, an ancient confederate,
"if it hadn't been for him Gawd knows what we'd 'a' had to talk about
in these dry days. I tell you, sah, we ought to be eternally grateful
to Abe Lincoln. I for one am. I was a clerk in a country store when
the war broke out and I'd 'a' been there yet if it wasn't for the war.
I'm here to say it made me and made my fam'ly. We were bawn
fighters--my fo' brothers and I--and up to the sixties we were always
in trouble for brawling. The war came along and made a virtue of our
vices. My mother used to be mighty 'shamed when she heard we were
called the 'Fighting Fitches.' That was befo' the war, and one or the
other of us boys was always up befo' the co't for wild carrying on.
But, bless Bob, when we were called 'Fighting Fitches' for whipping
the Yankees the old lady was as pleased as Punch."

"What did they call ye fer not bein' able to whup us?" asked a
grinning old giant from the mountains.

"Nothin'--'cause we were able. All we needed was mo' men and mo' food
and mo' guns. We'd 'a' licked the spots off of you Yanks if we had had
a chance. You wouldn't stand still long enough to get whipped."

So the talk went on, day in and day out. Battles were fought over and
over but never finished. They always ended with a draw and could be
resumed the next morning with added zest and new incidents. One old
man, Pete Barnes, who had the distinction of being the only private
who frequented the porch at Rye House, always claimed to have been
present at every battle mentioned--even Bunker Hill and the battle of
New Orleans.

"Yes sirree, I was there; nothin' but a youngster, but I was there!"
he would assert. "There wasn't a single battle the Fo'th Kentucky
Volunteers didn't get in on an' the Johnny Rebs would run like hell
when they heard we were comin'. I tell you when we got them a goin'
was at Fredericksburg in '62--must have been 'bout the middle of
December. We beat 'em even worse than we did at Chickamauga the
following year."

"Aw dry up, Pete. You know perfectly well the Yanks got licked at both
of those battles," a jovial opponent would declare, but Pete Barnes
was as sure his side had won as he was that he had been present at the
surrender of Cornwallis and there was no use in trying to persuade him
otherwise.

The Rye House faced on Main Street and nothing happened on that