conduct, as probably the most
effective way of diverting attention from his own. He sneered at the war
record of every contemporary who had achieved rank superior to his own,
as with hardly an exception every one of them had done so, and made the
burden of his song among the younger men the blunders, faults, and
follies of the elders. Without a drop of Irish blood in his veins, he
inspired the belief that he must be own cousin to the newly-landed
Hibernian who announced himself as "agin the governmint," for post and
regimental commanders without exception found him the most adroit,
crafty, sinuous, and troublesome of captains,--one who was forever doing
something to try them, yet nothing on which they could try him. Well he
knew his unpopularity and sagely judged his opportunities. The liberties
he had dared with Warren he would not now have ventured with Riggs, or
Black Bill, or old Tintop, one and all of whom had learned to know him
well, and would have been prepared for some such betrayal of the trust
reposed in him.

He had worried Black Bill--long time his post commander--to the verge of
exasperation with his perpetual hair-splitting and quibbling. He had
played his last trump with Tintop early in the campaign, and received
that grizzled veteran's rasping intimation that one more experiment
would lead to arrest and court-martial, and received it with every
appearance of amaze and pain, which might have been effective had not
Hastings been called upon beforehand to give his version of the affair
that led to it. It was one of those constantly recurring examples of
Devers's "cussedness" which led many a stout cavalry officer to set
forth just what he'd do with Devers if he only had him under his
command, yet the very men so confident they could bring him to time were
not infrequently the ones who subsequently found him too adroit for
their straightforward methods. Black Bill told Tintop that Devers was as
bad as the Irishman's flea,--put your thumb on him and he isn't there.
"I'll cinch him," said Tintop in reply, "if he tries any of his damned
nonsense on me." But with every intention of doing his level best,
"Topsy" little knew the infinite resources of the man.

One of Devers's idiosyncrasies was a hatred of doing things as anybody
else did them. This in a service where absolute uniformity was expected
was prolific of no end of chafing. In every garrison where his troop was
stationed he had become notorious. If t