"

To quote from himself, he had "been up to heaven long enough to get
'ligion." He had "gone up a lost sinner and come down a saved soul.
Bless Gord!"

Regarding his life as charmed, the blacks followed him in crowds, while
he descanted upon the text: "Then two shall be in the field. One shall
be taken and the other left."

A great revival was in progress.

But this afternoon the levee at Bijou had been the scene of a new panic.

Rumor said that the blockade chain had been cut. Farragut's war monsters
might any moment come snorting up the river. Nor was this all. The only
local defence here was a volunteer artillery company of "Exempts." Old
"Captain Doc," their leader, also local druggist and postmaster (doctor
and minister only in emergency), was a unique and picturesque figure.
Full of bombast as of ultimate kindness of feeling, he was equally happy
in all of his four offices.

The "Rev. Capt. Doc, M.D.," as he was wont, on occasion, to call
himself--why drag in a personal name among titles in themselves
sufficiently distinguishing?--was by common consent the leading man with
a certain under-population along the coast. And when, three months
before, he had harangued them as to the patriot's duty of home defence,
there was not a worthy incapable present but enthusiastically enlisted.

The tension of the times forbade perception of the ludicrous. For three
months the "Riffraffs"--so they proudly called themselves--rheumatic,
deaf, palsied, halt, lame, and one or two nearly blind, had represented
"the cause," "the standing army," "le grand militaire," to the
inflammable imaginations of this handful of simple rural people of the
lower coast.

Of the nine "odds and ends of old cannon" which Captain Doc had been
able to collect, it was said that but one would carry a ball. Certainly,
of the remaining seven, one was of wood, an ancient gunsmith's sign, and
another a gilded papier-mache affair of a former Mystick Krewe.

Still, these answered for drill purposes, and would be replaced by
genuine guns when possible. They were quite as good for everything
excepting a battle, and in that case, of course, it would be a simple
thing "to seize the enemy's guns" and use them.

When the Riffraffs had paraded up and down the river road no one had
smiled, and if anybody realized that their captain wore the gorgeous
pompon of a drum-major, its fitness was not questioned.

It was becoming to him. It corresponded to his lord